Too Old For This
by Zettel
Summary: About ten years after getting out of the spy life, and a couple of years after relocating from Burbank to Bozeman, the shadow of the spy life falls again on Chuck and Sarah, and this time on their eight-year-old son too. Is Team B ready to face a new adventure, or are they too old for this? *A Halloween Tale*.
1. Chapter 1: Greylag Gone

**A/N1** This story continues canon, but shifts the dates of canon back, so that the five years of the canon are 2003-2008 (and all the other, relative dates have shifted too). This story is set in the here and now, 2018. Chuck and Sarah (in the first years of their 40s) and their son, Rider (8), are _out_ : out of spying, even out of Burbank. And then something happens…

...of course.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **Too Old For This**

* * *

Chapter One

 _Greylag Gone_

* * *

Sarah let the damp, slickened binoculars fall to her chest, their weight pulling the strap against her sweaty, irritated neck. Mosquitoes were swarming around her but she forced herself to ignore them, to ignore their teasing, incessant buzzing, their constant, pinprick bites. She glanced to her side, seeing the bites on Casey's face, and measuring the intensity of his concentration as he peered through his binoculars and ignored the mosquitoes she could see swilling on the backs of his hands and his cheeks.

Doing for him what she would not do for herself, she waved her hand at the insects, forcing them all back into the live cloud of their kin that encircled her and Casey. As she did it, she thought involuntarily of watching _The_ _African Queen_ recently with Chuck, of that scene on the riverbank, the sudden attack of swarming insects...

Casey pulled the binoculars away from his face for just a second, blinking at her in thanks, for the thought, anyway. She could read the further thought in his eyes; she was thinking it too: _We are too old for this._ Sarah nodded a tight _you're-welcome_ , knowing that her face was as blotched with bites as Casey's. They were both exhausted.

She had seen Casey for the first time in about a year two days ago. But the chain of events that brought them here, here to this soaking, fetid jungle, began about a week before.

ooOoo

She and Chuck and their eight-year-old son, Rider, had been living quietly in the foothills of a mountain range in Montana for two years.

They had run Carmichael Industries for years and had been wildly successful. However, their work and their life in LA had started to seem too demanding, too stressful. At almost the same time she and Chuck had exactly the same idea: to sell the business and find someplace else to live. A place not quite off-the-grid, but on the outskirts of it, a place where on-the-grid met off-the-grid. They wanted to be able to concentrate on each other and on their son. Their married life had been good, richly rewarding, but clients and cases kept them busy, laboring under a weight of responsibility that had itself become an exhausting encumbrance, too heavy.

Sarah had marched into Chuck's office one day and told him she was tired of saving the world, as they had when they were Team Bartowski, and tired of saving the virtual world, as they had been doing as Carmichael Industries. It was time for someone else to do the saving. It was time for her and Chuck and Rider to just live in the world. Maybe to be among the ones who were being saved. She wanted to live and learn and love with Chuck; that's what she had always wanted. There was still so much of that to do. She wanted to raise and know and enjoy her son, spend time with him before his boyhood was gone. She wanted to be with the family she had always wanted, and now had, but too often had to give less than her absolute best because of the demands of Carmichael Industries.

Chuck had given her a look of total agreement, a huge smile, and that very day they had started taking steps to sell the business and to find a new place, and a slower, better way, to live. They had found it. They were close enough to Bozeman for family and friends to fly in for visits or to for them to fly to visit others, but far enough away to feel most of the time as though it was just the three of them beneath an infinite, musing blue sky.

They had built a beautiful home, large and airy, with massive windows facing the mountains. Sarah had a garden and a separate dojo. Horses. She ran the mountain paths. Chuck had a lab and a video game room. He coded when he wanted, played games when he wanted. Rider divided his time (when not in school) between accompanying his mom on her outdoor jaunts, and coding or playing with his dad indoors. But they all camped, rafted and hiked together. It had all been and had remained _idyllic_.

The only blot on their happiness was Sarah's inability to get pregnant again. Sarah knew she was getting older and was perhaps past the age when it made good sense to be trying, but when she found herself no longer worrying about _bad-guy-ery_ , she started thinking _baby-ly._ Chuck was all for it, and they had enjoyed themselves immensely trying to get pregnant, 'practicing' together like in the months leading to her pregnancy with Rider. But it hadn't happened; it now looked like it wouldn't. Rider would be an only child. They were all making their peace with that. Their life had rounded into an otherwise pleasing, comfortable shape.

ooOoo

But a couple of weeks ago, something happened, something happened to Chuck, something that seemed like nothing, or next-to-nothing, at the time.

Sarah had walked down the long driveway to get the mail, coming back with the expected pile of circulars and junk mail, and a letter from her sister, Molly. She put the circulars and junk mail down on the large oak kitchen table, next to Chuck. He always liked to look at it before he threw it away. He often found the ads amusing.

Chuck was seated next to Rider, reading to him from his one of Rider's namesake's novels, _She_. Chuck and Rider had read the H. Rider Haggard novel together several times, but they both loved it. Sarah had never exactly joined in, but she had overheard them so often she knew the novel almost as well as they did, and though she never admitted it, she loved the novel too.

She opened the letter from Molly and began to read about Molly's most recent teenage turmoil-her sister Sarah was her confidant-as she heard Chuck finish a chapter and shut the book. Rider got up, hugged his dad, and ran outside, hoping to shoot some hoops in the waning daylight. Chuck told him he'd be out in a second. Chuck pushed the novel toward the center of the table and drew the pile of junk mail toward him, automatically picking up on of the circulars. Sarah happened to look up as he did, and she saw him jolt slightly, his eyes go out-of-focus, and then she saw him blink several times in quick succession, shaking his head.

"Chuck? Chuck! My God, Chuck...did you _flash_?" Sarah had not even thought that word in a long time, much less said it aloud.

Chuck wheeled to her and smiled. "No, sweetheart, no, I couldn't have. I don't have the Intersect anymore. How could I flash? No, it's...it's just...a headache coming on. Must be. Too much reading here without enough light. I guess I may have to give in and buy those reading glasses after all. Too much coding, too many computer screens. If nothing else, I should probably get them for UV protection." He shook his head again gently as if to clear it.

He got up and went to the fridge, reaching into a basket on top of it and taking out a large container of aspirin. He dumped a couple into one hand, put the container down, then used the other to get a glass from the cupboard. He sat the glass on the counter, turned on the water, and then filled it. He tossed the aspirin into his mouth and washed them down. He smiled at her and she smiled back, feeling something in her gut that had tightened slowly loosen. He grabbed the circular, balled it up, dropped it in the trash. He went out to join Rider. She went back to Molly's letter. As she read, she half-listened to the sound of dribbling and playful trash talk from outside.

ooOoo

 _The next morning, Chuck was gone._

Sarah woke up with cold feet. They were her first indicator that something was wrong. She waited, though. Sometimes Chuck would wake ahead of her, and if he did, he always brought her the steaming, black coffee she coveted in the morning, then snuggled against her, his feet tangled with hers, while she sipped from her cup.

But he never came with coffee. He never came at all. Sarah began to feel the cold from her feet creeping up into her gut. Her spy instincts, while not exactly rusty, were not all they had been in her Enforcer days. But they were starting to tingle in an unpleasant way. She got up and walked through the house, stopping at Rider's room and opening the door. He was asleep, his curls going this way and that on his pillow. He was Chuck all over again, except for his eyes, like Sarah's, much the same blue as the Montana sky at the end of a sunny day. She closed the door and went on to the kitchen. No Chuck. No coffee. No sign of her husband.

She went to the sliding doors off the living room and looked out on the deck. Empty except for the grill and the furniture. Her heart was thumping noticeably. She swallowed hard.

Back in the kitchen, she noticed that Chuck's phone and charger were gone. His black high-top Chuck's, normally on a mat by the door, were gone too The thumping grew violent. Chuck's shoulder bag was not on the rack by the door. She went into his office. His laptop was gone, a blank spot where it normally sat visible immediately to Sarah.

She headed back to the bedroom. Her phone was on the nightstand. She grabbed it and punched Chuck's name. There were a couple of rings and then it rolled to his voicemail. She hung up. She sent him a text.

 _Where are you, Chuck? Did I forget an appointment?_

She kept the phone in her hand and went through the house again, but this time to the garage. Her Porsche was there, as was the Bronco Chuck had inherited from Stephen long ago and somehow managed to keep running all these years.

At this point, the thumping in her chest was thunderous. She was beginning to feel shaky.

Chuck was gone. No response to the text.

The moment with the circular suddenly came back into her mind. Chuck had flashed. He had. But he did not have the Intersect. Beckman and the NSA Intersect team had removed it years ago, not long after that magical kiss on the beach ( _Oh! That kiss!)_ , when Sarah's memories had welled up from the darkness to meet that kiss and she knew her husband, and herself, again.

But how was a flash possible? She ran to the kitchen and dug through the trash can, not even pausing to register that she was digging in refuse. The balled up circular was still there. She yanked it out of the trash. Looking at it, she could see nothing special, out-of-place, sinister. It was an ad for a national pizza chain.

She called her neighbor, Gina, who lived down the road, and asked her if she could watch Rider for the day. Gina, dotingly fond of Rider, and often alone now that her husband had died a year or so ago, was happy, eager even, to come over. Sarah ran down the hall to her room. She pressed a lock mechanism then pulled the drawer out of her nightstand and turned it over. She carefully lifted away the rectangle of wood that was the apparent bottom; a small pistol was anchored in the false bottom. She grabbed it. She got her purse and dropped the pistol into it, along with the balled-up circular. She quickly got dressed.

By the time she was ready to go, Gina had arrived. Sarah let her in and gave her a hug, but didn't explain what was going on. Although Gina knew nothing about the Bartowski's past, she was an intuitive woman, the widow of a state patrolman, and she had gotten a strong impression over the last couple of years that Chuck and Sarah were...not unacquainted with dangers.

"Rider's still asleep." Sarah looked at her watch. "Probably will be for another hour or so, since it's Saturday. Breakfast stuff is in the fridge. I should be back by lunch...not long after, anyway."

Gina nodded and went into the kitchen. She started making coffee. She spoke up, offered to make enough for Sarah, but Sarah, entering the kitchen, shook her head, tight-lipped. Gina turned, touched Sarah's arm. "Are you ok?"

Sarah shook her head. "I don't know what's happening, Gina. Chuck's not here, but he should be. I'm going to look for him. Don't let on to Rider. But do me a favor, once he goes outside to play, put some things in a backpack for him-clothes for a few days. We may have to leave."

Sarah finished talking to Gina and then went through the front door. Gina's brown Ford pickup was in front of the house. Sarah could see it's tire tracks leading to where it was sitting. But there was another set of tire tracks visible in pebbly, sandy soil. Sarah could not tell make out details of the tire tread or anything, but she did see something that made her stop breathing. On the edge of the half-circle driveway, in a spot with no pebbles and only dirt, was the clear imprint of a Chuck, the tread of one of Chuck's shoes. He'd gotten into a car.

Sarah was covered in a cold sweat. She ran around to the garage and got into her Porsche. She backed out and then went tearing down the road, obscured by her own trailing cloud of dust. She was going to find her husband.

ooOoo

When she got the Porsche off the backroads and on the highway to Bozeman, she punched the button on the dash to make a call. Carina.

Carina had moved up the food chain at the DEA. She was now running covert ops for the Agency, and not often, almost never, in fact, in the field herself. That was good, because Carina's life had done a complete one-eighty about five years ago.

She met a man, _the_ man, Bryan. He had been married before, but his wife had died while their son was still a baby. Bryan was a banker and had been an asset of Carina's on a drug-money laundering op in Miami. He was no part of the criminal activity, under no suspicion; he just had access to people and to programs that the DEA needed in the investigation.

Somehow, Carina had allowed herself to not only start sleeping with Bryan ( _not_ a surprise) but, during downtime in the op, to agree to meet his little boy, Simon. The father and son struck a deep chord in Carina, one Carina had no idea that she had. Carina demanded a promotion and got it, got out of the field, and a few months later, she was _married_ , a wife and mother. Bryan's work allowed him to travel, so he and Simon were often in DC during the school year, for holidays and breaks. Carina flew to Miami regularly, and she practically spent her summers there. The three of them were doing well, even with the scattered living arrangements. Sarah still had a hard time believing it. Carina-married, a mom! And it wasn't that she was both, but she was good at it. Bryan and Simon adored her and she was wholeheartedly devoted to them.

"Blondie!" Carina picked up the phone. "Knew I'd hear from you sooner or later when you tired of running with the Nerd Herd up there on the savanna. You're a predator, not prey." Even panicky as she was, Sarah snorted. Carina would never be completely domesticated, completely housebroken.

"Hey, Carina. Look, I have a problem. At least, I think I do...a big one."

"Shoot." All the levity was gone from Carina's tone.

"Chuck's missing."

"He...he left you, Blondie? That can't be. If ever there were two people who mated for life...Hell, you two are worse than a pair of Greylag geese…"

"No, Carina, no. Chuck left. But not me. Let me explain. There's not much to go on." She told Carina about the possible flash, about Chuck taking his computer and apparently getting picked up in front of the house sometime in the night or very early morning.

Carina was quiet but Sarah knew she was still on the line. Finally, she spoke: "I thought Beckman got you two clear, that the files, the records, of you two-three, counting Casey-had been buried. You were out of the life. You were out, right?"

"Yes, Carina. Well out. We haven't even done anything cybersecurity-related in a couple of years. And I don't think we did anything as Carmichael Industries likely to put Chuck in danger…"

"So you think he is in danger?"

Sarah huffed, frustration and ache mixed together. " _Greylag geese_ , remember. Chuck wouldn't just leave me with no word, not even to do something really important. No. There's something going on, Carina. And it is connected with that circular."

"Then get it to Beckman. And, Sarah, I can be free at a moment's notice. I love Chuckles too...in a more vertical way than you, but I am at your disposal."

"Ok. I just needed to say all that out loud to someone, before I call Beckman. I hate to bother her, given things with Roan…"

"Yeah, I saw them the other day. But the cancer's in remission. They both were hopeful. Beckman was even talking about finally retiring…As she said, 'How many stars are enough?' Well, keep me updated, Blondie."

"Bye, Carina."

Sarah was nearing Bozeman. She pulled off on a dirt road and headed back into the country. There was an NSA safe house there. Beckman had insisted that there be one near them, just in case. In the basement, hidden away, was a room of cutting-edge computer equipment, weapons and various other implements of the spy trade. Sarah had hoped never to visit. But now she was. She pulled out her phone and dialed Chuck again, but as she feared, it rolled to voicemail. She let the silly message play, just to hear his voice.

"You've reached Chuck Bartowski, and likely by mistake. No doubt, you are actually trying to reach my utterly amazing wife or our brilliant, completely adorable son. I am at your service, happy to convey a message to either. If on the off-chance that you do want to talk to _me_ , leave a message and I will get back to you. Promise. Buh-bye. Ugh! I mean...ahem...bye! Bye. Buh-bye. Oh, dammit…"

Her eyes got teary. She wiped them just as the safe house came into view.

* * *

 **A/N2** This will likely be around 10-12 chapters. Some adventure-related tension ahead, but no angst on tap. Some humor, although not much in this chapter.

 _Lemme know whatya think._..


	2. Chapter 2: Natural and Unnatural History

**A/N1** This is quite a bit different in tone and content than most of what I have written. As I told David Carner a while ago, I am tired of writing darkling, gritty stories. (Even if they eventually brighten.) This is meant to be old-school, a little over-the-top, comic-booky adventure. Thanks to David for passing an eye over this for me.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **Too Old For This**

* * *

CHAPTER TWO

 _Natural and Unnatural History_

* * *

Sarah stopped her Porsche in front of the safe house. Farmhouse, really. Old and grey and weather-beaten, but not derelict. It had a deep front porch and there were flowers growing in boxes along the steps leading up to the porch, to the front door. It looked like a place where someone lived, although Sarah knew that was a facade.

She climbed to the front door and gripped the handle securely. She stood unmoving. Sensors did their work; she heard the door unlock. Inside, the decor was what the outside implied: old, heavy furniture, Craftsman-style but cruder, bare wooden floors, a grandfather clock in the front hallway ticking as if it had a grudge against time.

Sarah had been careful about her approach, scanning the area for signs of anyone, anything out-of-the-ordinary. There had been none. She stood inside the doorway for a moment, listening. Other than the clock, she heard nothing.

She walked down the hallway and entered the kitchen. Cast iron pans in good condition hung from pegs next to the old stove, and a rack beside it held three old mixing bowls, striped, in various sizes. It all looked orderly, convincing. Off to the side in the kitchen was a narrow door. Sarah walked to it quickly.

There was a bit of needlework in a frame hanging by the door, a picture of a house at the end of a long pathway, and the motto: _Find the journey's end in every step of the road._ Sarah had wondered about that from the first time she and Chuck had visited the safe house. They'd visited with Beckman, and Sarah could not shake the impression that Beckman had done the needlework herself, chosen the motto, framed and hung it there, although Sarah had no proof of it and Beckman had not called attention to it.

Sarah pushed the frame sideways and behind it was a keypad. She punched in the long code and again heard locks turn. The real safe house was below ground. Sarah turned the knob and opened the narrow door, revealing a long, equally narrow set of steps. As she stepped onto the first one, the stairwell lit up, and she went down.

At the bottom of the stairs was another narrow door, but made of steel and heavily reinforced. Bomb-proof. She punched in another code on a pad by the door, this one plain to see, and then bent down for a retinal scan. A metallic voice sounded: "Sarah Bartowski, cleared." Locks audibly but invisibly turned. She opened the door. Lights came up inside.

She entered the main room. There were two large computer monitors on two small tables, and one still larger monitor hanging on a wall. Other electronic equipment occupied a long narrow table on the other side of the room. Desk chairs at keyboards stood before each of the monitors. Two doors lead out of the room. One led to a small kitchen and past it, a modest armory. The other led to two bedrooms.

Beckman and the government had gone to considerable expense creating the safe house, but Beckman said that she and the government owed it to them. It had seemed an unnecessary extravagance, and not exactly strategically or tactically sound, but Beckman had insisted. They had let her do it. But they had never been back to it. For each of them, the hope was that the first time they visited would be the last, because they knew if they did visit again, it would almost certainly mean they were back in the life, back in the game. Neither wanted that. Neither missed it. Neither had looked back. Until today.

Rider knew nothing of the safe house. He'd been in Burbank, staying with Ellie, Devon, and Clara when Chuck and Sarah had visited it. They had never mentioned it anytime he was around, and had really never mentioned it much at all even to each other. Sarah supposed that they each found the safe house's existence both troubling and comforting: a necessary concession to a life much of which they wanted to forget, but a concession that forced them on occasion to remember.

Sarah noticed that there was a thin layer of dust on the room, the equipment, the desks. That was surprising, given how lived-in the upstairs seemed. Then she realized that the caretakers, whoever they were, were likely unaware that the downstairs even existed, were likely unaware of the true purpose of the house.

Sarah walked over to one of the desks and sat down. She reached into her purse and retrieved the pizza circular. She smoothed it out on the desktop, then reached up and turned on the lamp on the desk; she needed more light. It was dim down there.

Nothing about the circular seemed worthy of notice, not at first glance. The usual photograph of a pizza, lists of deals featured that week, locations for pick-up and phone numbers for delivery. Sarah never paid any attention to these sorts of ads since no one delivered as far out as she and Chuck and Rider lived. If they wanted pizza, which they sometimes did, they went to town.

Sarah sat back in the desk chair, looked up at the ceiling, allowing her eyes to refocus, then she looked at the circular again, slowly and systematically. She saw only what she had seen before. She blew out a breath and started a third time. Still, nothing. She stood up and moved her head, her shoulders, trying to fight back the tension. She sat down. As she did, something about the circular finally struck her.

The pizza. The pizza, hot and gooey-looking, featured in close-up, was a pizza with black olives. Not just black olives as one among many toppings. It was a pizza with only black olives as a non-cheese topping. A cheese and black olive pizza. That would be Sarah's least favorite pizza.

Ads like these either featured pepperoni pizza or pizzas with many toppings. They didn't feature black olive pizzas. There was a reason for that; it looked like a pizza covered in bugs, beetles or somesuch. Odd. And gross too, from Sarah's point of view, both visual and gastronomic. Sarah stared at the photograph for a while but could make nothing more of it. Still, she now not only had Chuck's reaction to report to Beckman, she also had a definite feeling that there was something strange about the ad, even if she was unsure what exactly it was.

She turned on the computer, punched some keys, and waited for the video uplink to Beckman.

When Beckman appeared on the screen, Sarah was struck by how well Beckman was aging. Her hair was now mostly gray, but she had lost none of her focus or bearing. If anything, she seemed more formidable, not less. Taller, but of course not tall. She was unlikely to make anyone think of her as a grandmother, although Rider sort of did, and Sarah knew that both pleased and displeased Beckman. Emma and Mary, Rider's actual grandmothers, found it wholly amusing.

"Sarah, I must say, this is a surprise, and...I fear...an ominous one?" Beckman's tone was clipped and efficient but not unfeeling. It was laced with sudden worry.

Sarah nodded once. "Chuck's gone, General. I saw him last late last night when we…"

Sarah let the sentence die, realizing where it was headed. No need to share anything more. Her blush did the rest of the work.

She and Chuck had shared so much last night. It was probably one reason she hadn't ever gotten back to asking him about the possible flash. He'd made her _flash_ -so to speak-a number of times, in the best possible way, and then she had slipped into a deep, satisfied sleep, wrapped around her husband like a pale blond vine.

Beckman stepped into the sentential gap. "Um, yes, right. I can imagine. I mean I _won't_ , of course, but I can. Not that old, you know." There was the barest hint of a smile in Beckman's eyes for a second but then concern replaced it.

"I was going to call you, Sarah, actually. I should have done so sooner, but I didn't think, I wasn't sure the news signified anything." Beckman's gaze intensified. "Do you remember Dr. Stanley Wheelwright?"

"Yes, General, sure. Atroxium, right. Nightmare-inducing toxin. He's been in a maximum-security cell in an asylum since we captured him."

"That's true...and false."

"And... _false_?"

Beckman looked embarrassed. "Yes, I did not know it, but Wheelwright evidently returned to the land of the sane. And someone at the CIA decided it would be a good idea to put him to work. So, they moved him. Made him a prisoner at a black site, a lab, and let him be... _creative_. The in-joke among the few who knew about it at Langley was that he was going to create real ghosts to take the place of CIA ghosts." Beckman's contempt was audible. "Funny joke." She was decidedly not laughing. "But it's the CIA-what can you expect?" A ripple of self-consciousness traveled across Beckman's features. "Oh, sorry, present company excepted from shots at the Company, of course."

Sarah waved her hand; she had zero lingering loyalty to her one-time employers. "Why are you telling me this?" Sarah asked, even though she could feel the answer coming.

"Because Wheelwright escaped, a while ago, three months ago, I've found out, and he escaped not just with his own research, but with a cache of CIA files. Evidently, the black site had also been a paper dump, files were stored there that were supposed to be shredded years ago, but the CIA had never gotten around to actually hiring anyone to run the shredder. Wheelwright found the files…"

Sarah's stomach fell to the floor. "And among the files were…?"

Beckman pursed her lips, obviously not eager to go on. "Old files on you and some early files on Chuck, Casey, Team B. I think those were Graham's files. There may have been others. The CIA evidently did manage to shred one relevant document, the complete list of all the files dumped at the black site. All I could find was a partial list…and finding it took me forever." Beckman waved a yellowed piece of paper on the screen, annoyance written into the gesture. "I didn't learn about the escape for a while, the CIA kept it hush-hush, and then when I did, I didn't find out about the files for a while longer. Anyway, the partial list gave me enough to make me believe I needed to contact you."

Sarah sat quietly for a minute. "So, General, what was Wheelwright working on?"

"More than one project, but the only one we know anything much about was a project to create a much stronger version of Atroxium. We believe he called it "Revoltium"."

"Good to know he's still using the DC Evil Villain Name-Generator," Sarah said in a pinched tone.

"Is there really such a thing?" Beckman was serious.

Sarah shook her head, smiling a tight smile. "No, General, just picking up the slack without Chuck here." Sarah's voice broke a little when she said her husband's name.

"It'll be ok, Sarah. We'll find him. We don't know it was Wheelwright. Tell me the whole story."

Sarah repeated what she had told Carina, then she copied the pizza circular and uploaded it to Beckman. Beckman printed it off and looked at it. "That's an unappetizing pizza, I have to say."

"I agree. Do you think you can have an NSA lab analyze that? I can send the original." Beckman had turned to a computer screen beside her and punched some buttons. "I don't think you need to do that, Sarah."

"Why not?"

"Because I thought the ad looked familiar. I got one at my house yesterday. And it's featured on the national site."

"So it wasn't targeted at Chuck?" Sarah felt dislocated for a second.

She didn't like the story she had been constructing, but at least it was _a story_ , something to act on, a place to start. But if it were all wrong...then she had no clue about what had happened to Chuck, no clue, no plan.

"I'm not sure, Sarah. Let's wait for the lab folks to do their thing. I will get them on this and get back to you as soon as I can. Will you still be at the safe house?"

"For a little while. Then I have to get home to Rider and start trying to figure this out. I can't just sit around, waiting. You know me. Anyway, you can call my cell. It's secure or secure enough; Chuck's tinkered with it."

"Alright, Sarah. Try not to panic. Maybe this is some kind of massive misunderstanding." Beckman paused, looked down, then back up, a spark of momentary hope: "You don't have a birthday or anniversary coming up for which Chuck might be planning a grand gesture, do you?"

Sarah had to laugh at that, even as she shook her head. The momentary hope in Beckman's flickered, died. "Ok. Well, _if_ something has happened...if it has, we'll get Chuck back. We _always_ do." The screen went blank. Beckman's sign-off skills had never improved.

Sarah was about to walk to the armory when she heard or felt-or maybe _both_ -a strange, scurrying, scuttling noise behind her. She turned quickly in her chair.

She was alone in the room. The door was locked behind her.

The noise must have sounded in her imagination. Her worry was mounting. Leaving her purse on the desk, she stood and headed to the armory, getting a pistol with more stopping power and plenty of extra shells. She grabbed the holster of knives she had worn almost continuously from the time Graham had conscripted her until she and Chuck signed the papers separating them from the government. She was unhappy and relieved when she put the knives around her calf and they felt familiar, in-place.

She had just adjusted the holster around her calf when she heard the noise again, a whispery, dancing sound. Barely audible. She whirled. For a second, she thought she saw something in the corner, but then realized it was just darkness in the darkness. Nothing to be afraid of. But her skin was creeping on her bones a little. Too much talk of Wheelwright. Too little light in the safe house. Too much panic over Chuck. It was all adding up.

She grabbed a couple of flashbangs, a tranq pistol, and some tranq darts. She reached up to grab a black backpack hanging on the wall when she heard the sound again. She did hear something. She was _sure_ of it. She took the backpack down; the main compartment was already unzipped. She took the gear off the table and dropped into the open top of the backpack. She swung the backpack up and over her shoulders.

She had just gotten back into the main room when she heard the sound again. She bent down and pulled up her pants leg, securing one of her throwing knives. She had one hidden at the house she sometimes took with her on runs and practiced with, just to be sure she hadn't lost all her knife skills. Now, she was glad she'd made that concession to the past.

She was crouched when she saw the darkness in the darkness... _move_. _Crawl_ , to be exact. Out, out from the corner and out into the light crept a spider, larger than any Sarah had ever seen, even at a zoo. And it was moving toward her slowly...carefully. It was _stalking_ her _._ A clump of darkness in another corner moved too. A second stalker joined the first.

Carina had been wrong on the phone. Sarah _was_ prey.

For a few helter-skelter seconds, Sarah had an out-of-body experience, wondered if she'd been gassed with Revoltium. Maybe Wheelwright had gotten it into the air system of the safe house somehow. Maybe the spiders were just in her head… _.Maybe_.

And then she knew the spiders weren't just in her head, because there was one in her hair.

ooOoo

Gina could hear Rider dribbling the basketball outside. He'd been immediately suspicious when he woke up to find Gina there, and Chuck and Sarah both gone. She'd done her best to distract him with pancakes.

But she could see the boy's brain whirring behind his big blue eyes. He hadn't believed her story that his dad had been called away and that Sarah had needed to get some groceries in Bozeman. That was one smart kid.

Gina loved him like he was her own. He wasn't just a beautiful boy, he was exceptional in almost every way. Gina sometimes imagined him wearing a cape; he seemed like a little superhero.

He'd inherited his father's sponge-like mind and gentle heart, and his mother's athletic prowess and true steadfastness, her laser focus.

During the winter months, Gina often tagged along to watch Rider play hockey in the city league. He was so good they had allowed him to play in the age group above him, and he was still dominant there. For such a sweet kid, on the ice, he displayed a killer instinct.

The word about 'the boy wonder' had gotten around, and so there was usually more than just the small crowd of parents around when he played. She admired his ability to play with such intensity and then to just be a kid among other kids when off the ice. He was equally good at baseball.

He was also a terrific student and had been moved into a program for gifted kids early in his time in Montana. Gina knew one of his teachers, his science teacher, and although the teacher was fond of Rider, it was also clear that she was a smidgen intimidated by the little scientist.

Gina sipped her coffee, shaking her head happily. Luck or some higher power had smiled on her when the Bartowskis moved in down the road and befriended her. Her days and nights had been lonely for a long time, but now they weren't. She and her husband had not had kids, so they, she, had no grandkids. But now Gina felt like she did, although Rider called her 'Auntie Gina'.

Gina noticed that the sound of dribbling had stopped. Then she realized it hadn't heard it for a while. That made her curious, so she put her coffee down and went to look outside. Rider's basketball was on the concrete below the basket; Rider was nowhere in sight. Gina went out the screen door and got a better view. She still didn't see the boy.

"Auntie Gina, run!"

Gina whipped her head around to see Rider racing out of the small barn near the house, sprinting as fast as he could. Behind him she saw...spiders. _Spiders_? Spiders. Spiders as big as kittens, and fast too. No time to think. She ran to the door and held it open. Rider dashed past her and she yanked the door shut hard behind her, just before the first of the spiders got there. It climbed up the door, and she could see the full horror of the thing as it hung from the screen, staring at her with many eyes. She stood there, her two eyes dueling with its crowd of eyes. Eight. For a hanging second, she wondered what octonocular vision would be like. Then she came to herself. She turned and ran.

"Rider!"

"Gina! I'm in my room. Be careful, there might be more in the house." Gina watched her pathway as she hustled to Rider's room. When she got there, she found him already outfitted. He had on his catcher's mask and a batting helmet. He had put on high, heavy plastic wading boots, and as she came into the room, he finished putting on his hockey gloves and grabbed his hockey stick.

Before she could stop him, he bounded from the room. She searched frantically in his closet and grabbed a baseball bat then she chased the little Bartowski. When she got to the living room, she witnessed a bizarre scene, half-horrific, half-comic.

Three large hairy spiders were working their way, cooperatively, toward Rider. He was standing with his hockey stick at the ready, looking like a mutant masked baseball-hockey-fisherman. One of the spiders rushed Rider, but the boy stood firm: he timed a perfect slap shot and sent the spider hurling, airborne. It smacked the wall with a wet-sounding thump-crack, then half-fell, half-slid to the floor, leaving a splash of strange goo on the wall.

Gina turned back in time to see that one of the remaining two spiders had shifted targets to her. It came scurrying toward her, fast, really fast. She got the bat up and brought it down just in time to hit the spider. But she missed the body; she crushed some legs.

The spider tried to pull itself toward her with its remaining legs. She whacked it unmercifully, up and down with the bat, up and down, until it was mangled, smashed on the floor. She looked up to see Rider himself in the air. He had leaped up and he came down with his boots on the other spider. It popped beneath Rider's landing, but the boy stomped on it a few times for good measure.

Gina ran to him and pulled the catcher's mask up, to see his face. She was startled to find him calm. He gave her a quick grin, a copy of his father's, but his calmness was all his mother's.

"Big bugs, huh? Brazilian Wandering Spiders, I think." Gina's mouth moved but she wasn't sure what to say. "School project last year, the natural history of arachnids."

Gina started to ask a question, but Rider turned, pulling down his mask and running toward the door. "C'mon Aunt Gina, we gotta save Mom!"

Gina started sprinting to catch up. "But, Rider, I don't know where she is!"

"That's ok," he said, as he went through the front door, "I do!"

ooOoo

Sarah had to get the thing out of her hair.

She swatted wildly at it. She finally hit it and it fell to the floor. The other spiders had used the time to close on her. The one that had, presumably, crawled out of the backpack now joined them. She was cornered.

The spiders crawled closer, crouching, intent. Sarah had her knife in her hand. One spider rushed her. Her knife hand flashed out and the spider was twitching, impaled by the knife she threw. But the other two were closer now, and it would take Sarah seconds, and she would have to crouch down, to get another knife. She faced almost the same problem in getting anything out of the backpack, assuming there were no more spiders in it.

When that thought crossed her mind, she shrugged the backpack off and let it hit the floor. The spiders came closer. She knew she could likely kill one with her feet, but that would leave the other with an opening. But she had no choice. She gathered herself to leap at one.

...And the safe house door opened, and a small, masked baseball player, no, hockey player, no, fisherman, no... _Rider_ tore through the door. He whacked one of the spiders with his hockey stick. Sarah jumped on the other. Gina came through the door, panting and wide-eyed, saying 'Rider' on repeat.

Rider pushed up his catcher's mask and grinned at his mom. _God, she loved that boy so much. She was going to kill him_. He had inherited his dad's lack of good sense. Neither one could stay in the damn car, so to speak.

" _Rider Bartowski!_ What are you doing here?" She tried to make her voice sound very angry, but her relief made it impossible.

Rider's grin grew. "Um, Mom, what are _you_ doing here? And where's Dad?"

* * *

 **A/N2** Alrighty, then. More soon.


	3. Chapter 3: One Silken Thread

**A/N1** And on we go. Some events come into better focus.

Thanks for the reviews so very much. Writing is lonely work. A fountain pen ain't much company. Lovely to hear from you.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **Too Old For This**

* * *

CHAPTER THREE

 _One Silken Thread_

* * *

Instead of answering Rider's question, Sarah pushed the catcher's mask back down over his face. Looking at him sternly but not unkindly through the bars, she gave him an order: "Come with me. Let's make sure there aren't any more of those hairy...monsters down here. But be careful!" She knew it would be pointless to tell him to wait. _He's his father's son._

She saw that the grin on his face grew even more, although she could also see that he had noted her dodge. "Brazilian Wandering Spiders, Mom. But they usually don't act like this, hunting...people...in broad daylight. Weird." He then registered the dimness of the safehouse. "Well, they were in daylight at our house, anyway."

Sarah turned to lead the way toward the kitchen and armory. "Gina, stay with us, but _behind_ us." Sarah glanced over her shoulder at Gina. Her eyes were big and she was still panting, and Sarah could see the heap of questions in Gina's eyes. _So much for leaving the past in the past._ She'd talk to Gina in a little while. One mission at a time.

Sarah and Rider worked cautiously through the kitchen and armory, making sure to check corners and crevices and to check anything, like a large pot or _a backpack_ , into which one of the spiders could squeeze and hide. But they found nothing.

They got the same result in the bedrooms. When they got back into the main room, Sarah went upstairs and found a broom, a dustpan, and a garbage bag. She and Rider swept up the mangled spiders and dumped them in the bag while Gina held it open. She held it as far from her body as possible, making a horrible face as each spider dropped inside. Sarah was impressed, though; Gina was holding it together even in the midst of all this craziness.

As they finished the gruesome task, Sarah began asking Rider questions. She kept her tone light, wanting answers but also hoping the talk would help to settle Gina.

"Rider," she commenced, "how did you find this place?"

He looked up at her, right into her eyes. The confrontation of eyes was strange. Her own blue eyes, warm, but guarded, non-committal, stared back at her. She knew for the first time what it must be like for Chuck so often when he looked into her eyes, even after all these years. _Chuck!_ But then Rider's eyes softened, melted, still her blue but now his father's openness.

"Mom, I'm smart. Every time we pass the road to this place, you and Dad stare in this direction, both of you with weird looks on your faces. Then you look at each other, and then you hold hands.

"One day when Auntie Gina and I were out driving around, I asked her to drive up the road so we could look around. When I saw this place, I knew it was what you two were thinking about." Sarah cocked her head and looked at Gina, who was closing the garbage bag. She shrugged at Sarah, conceding that her part in Rider's story was true.

"I had no idea," Gina apologized. Sarah smiled at her.

"And since…" Rider looked at Gina, moving his eyes but not his head, a gesture, and Sarah nodded, just enough for him to see, an answering gesture, "...since you and Dad used to be _spies_ , I figured this place had something to do with your old life."

Gina had gasped at 'spies' but Sarah kept her gaze focused on Rider, muffling her shock. "And you knew we used to be spies... _how_?"

Rider grinned again. "C'mon, _spy-kid_ , Mom. I think. I watch. I listen. I hear things." His face clouded. "Like your bad dreams, the ones you wake up from, scared…and yelling, sometimes." His voice choked, went soft. "I'm glad those hardly happen anymore, Mom."

Sarah blinked back the immediate tears. She grabbed Rider and hugged him to her. "Me, too, Rider. Me, too."

He pulled back and looked up at her. "And Dad, well, he never told me on purpose, but he must've been the worst spy ever. He used to tell me bedtime stories when you were out of town-they were always about a beautiful, deadly spy and the nerd who loved her. How could Dad think I wouldn't know who he was really talking about?"

Sarah shook her head. She had loved the man forever and she had no answer to that question. She hugged Rider again. "Ok, so you figured out the house had something to do with our past lives, but why did you think I would be here today?"

"Because something's happened with Dad, right?" Rider's smile evaporated; a frown materialized; Sarah could see the fear in his face. "Dad doesn't just leave, Mom. He packs. Two of everything. And he'd never leave you or leave me. _Never_." He said the last word vehemently. And suddenly her son seemed eight to her again, insecure and in need of reassurance. She squeezed him.

"It's ok, Rider. Yes, something's happened...and I don't know what. But I will figure it out. I've...lost him before-and found him again. We find each other. It's...kind of been our thing." She could see curiosity overcome the fear on her son's face, but he didn't ask any questions. He just hugged her again, then he went on, talking as he hugged her.

"So, I knew something had happened with Dad and I knew you'd come here. This is some kind of spy house, right. I mean, what dummy'd keep up all those flower boxes outside but never paint the house?"

"What dummy, indeed?" It was Beckman's voice. They all looked up. Her face was showing on the large monitor on the wall.

Beckman smiled. "Good morning again, Rider." She shifted her gaze. "And you must be Gina." Gina nodded slowly, unsure what to make of the tiny General on the big screen.

Rider piped up, his head turning to Sarah then back to Beckman. "So, Mom, I got Auntie Gina to drive me here, and I called General Beckman. She... _overrode_ , is that the word again, General?," Rider looked up and Beckman nodded, "...she overrode the locks so we could get to you."

Ignoring the General for the moment, Sarah returned her attention to Rider. "Did you notice anything...odd...about Dad last night, Rider?"

The boy's face pinched as he thought. "He was moping a little between games last night, but he's been doing that lately, hasn't he, at night?"

The question stopped Sarah short. Chuck had been moping lately, particularly sometimes in the evenings. Sarah had taken it to be his disappointment about their failure to get pregnant again. She expected that he'd talk when he was ready; he always did. Unlike her, he didn't tend to ignore his sadness or disappointment. Chuck bled, suffered. And maybe the moping had been partly that. They'd both been saddened by their failure. But she hadn't thought before about why the moping would happen so often _in the evenings_. In the evenings…

In the evenings, _after the mail had arrived_.

Maybe that evening mopiness was something else. Sarah looked up at Beckman. "Maybe you should have all the circulars from the pizza place examined. Maybe the one last night was just the most recent one, not the only one."

"Ok, Sarah. I will tell the team. Is everyone there ok?"

Sarah nodded. "We are going to head home. Call me there, as we talked about." Then Sarah snapped her head around to Rider. "What a minute, Rider. How did you call General Beckman?"

Rider looked nervous, a little unsure. Then he shrugged and dug a phone out of his pocket. "I called her on my phone."

" _Your_ phone _?_ You don't have a _phone_ , Rider."

He waved the obvious phone at her, suppressing a guilty smile. "Yeah, Mom, I do. Dad told me I could have one if I helped him build it, so I did. It took us a long time, but I learned a lot, and it works." His face lit up, then dimmed. "Although Dad forbid me to use it except in emergencies. He put the General's number in it, along with a few others. Carina. Casey. Grandpa Jack and Grandma Emma, Grandma Frost…"

Sarah stiffened. "We will talk about this later, young man. And your father and I, well, _we need to talk too_." She knew how much Chuck loved it when she used that phrase. "General, do you know where Frost is? She was Wheelwright's handler, more or less, for Volkoff. She might be able to help us. She'd want to know about Chuck."

"Yes, she would. I have been trying to contact her. But she is unreachable. No one at Langley can tell me anything, or will tell me anything." Beckman audibly ground her teeth. "I will keep trying. Maybe you should check the number in Rider's phone...Maybe it is one we don't have?"

"I will, General. I'd like a look at my son's contact list and call log." She glanced at Rider out of the corner of her eyes. He was toeing the floor with one of his rubber boots, keeping his head down. His phone had disappeared. Back in his pocket, presumably. _Out of Mom-sight, hopefully out of Mom-mind._ _Doesn't work that way, kid; spy-mom, remember?_

"General, can you send someone here to collect some of these spider things? Rider thinks they behaved oddly. We should see if there's any explanation in their...corpses? Bodies? Remains? Carcasses?"

"Yes, a team from Bozeman has already been dispatched. Do you want them to go on to your house next?" Sarah nodded her head. "Alright. They should be there soon, Sarah. Gina," Beckman shifted her gaze, her tone, "I hope you understand that all you have heard and seen today is reckoned a matter of National Security. I will expect you to act appropriately."

Gina, who had been standing with her jaw imitating a porch swing, shut her mouth in a pointed way. She gave the General a sober nod.

"Good. Sarah, I leave what you tell her to your discretion, except for any mention of… _you know,_ " Beckman rolled her eyes upward as if she were trying to see her own forehead.

Sarah fought back an impulse to laugh. "Yes, General, I know. I think we can avoid that." _Damn Intersect. The thing's like a zombie. You kill it and it rises to fight again. But wait, Chuck doesn't have the Intersect…_

Sarah shot Beckman a sudden, questioning glare. Beckman's screen went blank, but not before Sarah thought she saw Beckman avert her eyes and swallow hard. _What the hell?_

"Does she always just...hang up...like that?" Rider wondered.

Sarah responded, "Pretty much. ' _With the high and mighty_ …'"

"'... _Always a little patience_.'" Rider completed the line. It was from an old movie he had watched with Sarah and Chuck several times, a favorite of hers.

Rider smiled a sneaky smile. "Except the General's mighty, but not so high. I am taller than she is." He stretched himself skyward, laughter bubbling from him, irrepressible, even then, even there. Her boy.

Then the three of them laughed together. That seemed to dispel some of the tension that had remained thick in the room. Sarah looked at the screen Beckman had been on. _A_ little _patience..._

Sarah lifted the backpack, peered into the main compartment one more time, just to be sure, and shuddered at the memory of that hairy thing in her hair. She wasn't sure there was a hot shower long enough or a bottle of shampoo large enough to help her get past that. The three went up the stairs into the farmhouse kitchen, and then out into the daylight.

ooOoo

The team from Bozeman arrived soon and Sarah met them in the driveway. She had a quick, hushed conversation with them, and then she asked Gina to come back to the house. She and Rider got in her Porsche and they drove homeward.

Sarah sneaked looks at Rider during the silent drive. The silence was pregnant but not uncomfortable; they were both processing the morning, its events and what those events had revealed or confirmed. Rider watched Montana pass outside the passenger window. She could see him bouncing one leg, a nervous twitch he had inherited from his father. She was unsure what to do about...everything. Rider was eight. She had not wanted him exposed to the spy life, to their past, not at all, and certainly not at this age. But it turned out that he had been exposed, all along. He was too smart for her good, maybe for his own. He was Chuck all over, able to see and feel at the same time, his heart as trustworthy a guide as his eyes, even a supplement to them. That was a feature of Chuck's Sarah dearly loved; it had been, in many ways, what saved her in the past: her husband's gift of seeing more than met his eyes. He'd certainly done that where she was concerned.

Evidently, Rider had done that too, because, although he was clearly worried about his Dad, he seemed unfazed by the confirmation that his mother had been a spy, and he even seemed to intuit that her life as a spy had forced her into actions that she had regretted. He didn't know what they were, true, but she could guess that he could guess, in general, anyway. And yet he had hugged her like always. _Mom._ He did not seem the least bit afraid of her or changed toward her. If anything, his manner toward her suggested that he was relieved. Relieved: he was no longer forced to carry as a secret something that he knew but was not supposed to know. She now knew he knew. And she had to confess, although her feelings were certainly mixed, there was some relief in that for her too.

When they got to the house, after Sarah and Rider cautiously searched through the house and the barn, they garbage-bagged the dead spiders and washed down the living room wall, as well as scrubbed the spots on the floor. Gina pitched in and they did the work silently, together, the three of them.

Sarah sent Rider to his room to change and rest. She took Gina into the kitchen and made a fresh pot of coffee. She offered Gina an abridged, Intersect-less version of her and Chuck's story. Gina listened quietly, shaking her head here and there in sheer disbelief. At one point she confessed, "You know, I guessed something like this, but I thought it was too... _outlandish_. I could see you as a spy, but Chuck..."

Sarah had smiled and responded, simply, "I've always had the same trouble."

Gina volunteered to spend the day, but Sarah gently sent her home. "We may need you again soon, Gina. And thank you! Please, as General Beckman...ordered, never tell anyone about this."

Gina nodded. "My husband was law enforcement, you know, Sarah. I kept secrets for him. I can do it for you folks too." They hugged outside, next to her car, and Gina drove away. Sarah watched the dust trail of her car for a few minutes, forcing herself to breathe calmly. Her mind and heart were jumbled, worry for Chuck, shock about the events of the day, concern for Rider, thoughts and feelings tumbled and gyrated in her. She shook her head and went inside.

She checked her phone. No call from Beckman yet. She looked at her watch. Early afternoon. She'd give the General a while longer. But at some point, she and the General were going to have a serious conversation. Something was up, something that Beckman knew and Sarah didn't, and it involved her husband. It was almost certainly related to what had happened.

Sarah was washing coffee cups, just to have a way to keep her hands from fidgeting, when she hear Rider shout: "Mom!" She dropped the cup, heard it smash on the floor as she ran to Rider's room.

He was standing next to his small desk, a torn piece of paper, a page from a book, grasped tightly in his hand.

Sarah had drawn her pistol as she ran. When she saw that nothing was wrong, she quickly put it away before Rider saw it.

"What is it, Rider? You scared me to death."

He stared urgently up at her. "Dad left us a clue, Mom. I knew he'd figure out something. I knew it!" She could hear the mixture of relief, hope, and pride in Rider's voice. He handed her the page. It had been torn from an old poetry anthology. The anthology was on the desk.

It was a poem by E. B. White, entitled "Natural History":

 _The spider, dropping down from twig,  
_ _Unfolds a plan of her devising,  
_ _A thin premeditated rig  
_ _To use in rising.  
_ _And all that journey down through space,  
_ _In cool descent and loyal hearted,  
_ _She spins a ladder to the place  
_ _From where she started.  
_ _Thus I, gone forth as spiders do  
_ _In spider's web a truth discerning,  
_ _Attach one silken thread to you  
_ _For my returning._

"What's it mean, Mom? I mean it's a warning about the spiders. I wish I had seen it sooner. But is it more? Dad found the poem for me back when I did my arachnid project, read it to me. But it was still in the book, the page was still in the book, not torn out. It must be more than a warning."

Sarah forced herself to focus and read through the poem once again. She knew Chuck. Rider was right. Chuck had left this. But why not leave a note, something else? Maybe because this was the best he could do. What would that _mean_ , though?

The poem was the silken thread it mentioned. Chuck had attached it to her and Rider. He was planning to return home. But she was sure he would need their help.

Sarah knelt down to look directly into Rider's face, her hands gentle on his shoulders. "It is more than a warning, Rider. It's also a promise."

ooOoo

Wheelwright eased back in the comfortable seat of the chartered jet. The plan had worked. It had worked! He had Bartowski. Now, to get away with him and get to work.

He glanced at Chuck, slumped in the seat opposite, a thick string of drool leaking from his mouth. Chuck twitched occasionally but never awakened. Wheelwright almost felt sorry for him. _Almost_. Chuck Bartowski was going to plumb terrors no man, no woman had yet sounded. He would be the Neil Armstrong of horror, but he would step onto the darkest side of the moon. Soon, Chuck Bartowski would be a monster. _Wheelwright's monster_. Created by Wheelwright's dark, unhallowed arts. Chuck would be Patient Zero, an Adam, in a new, electronic outbreak, a new age.

It was Chuck's destiny. It had been waiting for him, waiting, all along, all these years.

Wheelwright could hear the spiders behind him, crawling in their cages.

* * *

 **A/N2** I start teaching Monday. Syllabi to finish. Lectures to write. College students to bedazzle. No schedule for the next chapter. Might be a few days, a week. But who knows? Might be sooner. It'll arrive when it arrives. (Always a sound strategy, hiding in tautology.)

So, tune in next time for Chapter 4, "Greylag Gulag". Fun will be had. Hey, and leave a review, you know, _for my returning._


	4. Chapter 4: Greylag Gulag

**A/N1** Chapters will lengthen after this. This is the last of the 'scene-setting' chapters. Warning: Comic-book creepy coming…

Please leave this webspinner a review, or send him a PM, or do something to let him know he's not typing into nothingness…

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **Too Old For This**

* * *

CHAPTER FOUR

 _Greylag Gulag_

* * *

Chuck heard birdsong. Or he thought he did. Or he thought he thought he did. He was unsure, even of being unsure.

Something...was happening...to him. It seemed a little like waking up; it seemed a little like sobering up; it seemed a little like being born. It was as if a moment before he had been a mere body, untroubled by a mind, and then slowly, ever so slowly, like raindrops off a roof an hour after a shower, sentience returned, concreteness, retention, continuity...the whole concrete, retentive, continuous system of minded life, it came back to him, and he was gradually himself again.

Birdsong. Yes, he did hear birdsong. Then the sound of fluttering, troubled wings, flight in an escape, a change in the song, less musical, more urgent. The birds had been frightened. Chuck was frightened too.

He was on his back. He sat up, causing deep, roiling waves of heavy pain beneath his forehead. He had the headache all other headaches envied. He grabbed his own head and squeezed, trying to force the pain back, to somehow minimize it. He failed. He fell back on the...cot. He closed his eyes.

He went back to being asleep, or to being drunk, or to being unborn. He heard nothing. But before he slipped entirely into that strange unbeing, he felt something crawl across his chest.

ooOoo

Sarah was in her bed. She was not asleep. She did not expect to sleep. Chuck was gone. Her bed was empty. She stared at the ceiling, trying to stay calm enough to rest, even if she couldn't sleep. The scent of Chuck enveloped her; she had put on one of his shirts. It helped a little. She thought about the afternoon, her conversation by phone with Beckman. And then later with Ellie.

" _Sarah?"_

" _Yes, General. Do you have any news, anything to tell me?" She made sure the barb was audible in the final clause of her question._

" _Sarah, we need to talk." Sarah winced, unused to hearing her phrase to Chuck aimed at her._

" _Ok, General. Rider is napping. Let's talk. But before you start, let me tell you what Rider found." She told the General about the spider poem, read it to her. She thought she heard Beckman choke up at the end. "Do you have any idea why Chuck would communicate with us in such a bizarre way, General?" Barbed, again._

 _Beckman was silent for a moment, perhaps composing herself after the poem, perhaps composing her answer. But then she spoke: "I do have an idea. But you aren't going to be happy when I tell you."_

 _Sarah had braced herself for something like this, so she was able to keep her rising fury under some control. "Please...just tell me."_

" _First, your poem is not the only indirect communique Chuck left behind, Sarah. The team from Bozeman found a drawing on a table in the safe house. A drawing in the dust. It was a drawing of a spider, and underneath it, the single name, 'Freddy'. Does that mean anything to you?"_

" _Freddy?" Sarah felt lost. Then it hit her. Chuck had told her long ago that Wheelwright looked and sounded like that movie-monster, Freddy...Freddy Kroger...No, Freddy Krueger._

" _Freddy Krueger. Chuck told me several times that Wheelwright looked like_ Freddy Krueger. _So...it was Wheelwright."_

" _That is what we are now thinking. One of the Bozeman team members came up with Krueger. I guess this...Freddy turned into a spider in a movie?" Sarah confessed she wasn't sure. She'd never watched any Freddy movies, even though Chuck had asked a couple of times. She had no desire then to remember Wheelwright. She hated that she had to remember him now. She found him deeply creepy. The thought of him having Chuck made her skin crawl, absolutely crawl._

" _So, what else do you have to tell me, General?" Sarah allowed her tone to be openly demanding. Beckman was technically no longer her boss._

" _Sarah, there's something you don't know, something Chuck didn't want you to know, a secret. We kept it because we thought it could do no harm but now I am sure we were wrong about that. Chuck still has...an Intersect."_

 _Sarah saw red but made herself direct the anger, mold it. "He has...an Intersect? Not...the Intersect?"_

" _Well…," Beckman stretched the syllable out, "it sort of depends on how you count…."_

" _General!"_

 _She could feel Beckman stiffen all the way up the line. "Sarah, when Ellie and her team were extracting the last Intersect Chuck downloaded, he told her something that caused...complications. Evidently, when Chuck was a boy, he downloaded an early version of the Intersect, downloaded it in his father's study. He's had the Intersect...an Intersect...for most of his life. Ellie was able to remove the last Intersect Chuck downloaded, but she was," Beckman paused and cleared her throat, "afraid to remove the first one."_

 _Sarah trembled, involuntarily. "Afraid? Why, General, why afraid?"_

" _Because it was so deeply implicated in, so completely integrated with his mind, with him. She said that the first Intersect was so deeply part of Chuck that it hardly made sense to think of it as a_ part _at all. She was afraid that if she removed it, she might remove Chuck too, so to speak, damage or lose the man in the attempt to undo what the boy had done."_

 _Sarah's mind was Ferris-wheeling. She was angry; she was frightened; she was confused. "Why am I only finding out about this now?"_

 _Beckman was quiet for a moment. "Because Chuck asked us not to tell you. Ellie believed that the first Intersect could no longer cause flashes and posed no threat, physical or psychological, to Chuck. Chuck didn't want you to know for reasons that I never completely understood. You'll have to talk to Ellie about that. But, given that Ellie thought it would cause Chuck no harm, I went along with both leaving it in him and leaving it a secret._

" _I now think, I now know I made a mistake. Anyway, for what it is now worth, Sarah, I am sorry." She paused._

 _"I just got two pieces of information. That's why I delayed calling you. I needed to do some follow-up. First, the pizza circulars were encoded, specifically for an Intersect. We think it was encoded for the one he still has. We are unsure what the encoding does, but it is likely commands of some kind, a way of taking control of the Intersect, and so of the person who has it._

" _Second, a drone I sent to Langley to dig around turned up a copy of the complete list of files dumped at the CIA black site Wheelwright was at. She found it in misfiled in a folder...well, nevermind. It doesn't matter. The list only has one thing of interest beyond what we already knew. There were three files there labeled 'Orion'." Sarah caught her breath. "I don't know what was in them, but Wheelwright had to have figured out that Chuck still had an Intersect somehow...I'm guessing those files are a crucial part of the story."_

 _Sarah chewed on the inside of her lip, thinking. Chuck had downloaded the Intersect all those years ago? Bryce's emailed Intersect was not Chuck's first brush with it after all. Maybe the early exposure explained why Chuck did so much better with the later versions than anyone else did? Or maybe that he survived the early version meant that he really was just that Intersect apt, made for it, as it were. She shook her head._

" _Alright, General. I'm going to talk to Ellie and tell her about all this. And she is going to tell me all about this new, I mean, new-to-me Intersect."_

" _I will get in touch if I learn anything new. We are currently investigating all the flights into and out of Bozeman."_

 _Sarah hung up. She wanted to curse at Beckman and she wanted to grab something and throw it. Why would Chuck have kept this from her?_

 _But as she asked herself the question, she had an inkling of the answer. Chuck had always been afraid that she would not love him without the Intersect. Quinn had pushed those buttons, for example, in that Buy More, years ago, telling Chuck he would never have had Sarah if not for the Intersect. She thought she had gotten him past that insecurity, but maybe she hadn't. Maybe she hadn't because all this time she'd been with him, in love and happy, thinking that the Intersect was gone, it hadn't been gone. Chuck had it before she met him and he still had it after she thought he no longer did. Maybe he was still worried that he couldn't really keep her if he let go of the Intersect._

 _She dialed Ellie's number. As she waited for an answer, she picked up Rider's phone. She had officially confiscated it. She at least needed to know what was on it. She started scrolling through the contacts when Ellie answered._

ooOoo

"Chuuu-uuck! Oh, Chuu-uuck!" Lilting, the voice. Lilting.

Not birdsong. A human voice. Human-ish. Not birdsong but singsong.

"Breathe deep, Chuck. Breathe _deeeep_." Chuck could feel his throat burning. His headache, Mother of All Headaches, stormed back. "Breathe deep, Chuck, enjoy the Revoltium…Inhale, enjoy..."

 _Revoltium_? Chuck laughed. He tried to laugh. But that made him cough. And that made his throat burn more intensely, an old pine conflagrating in a forest fire. He finally opened his eyes. Just a slit. He was on the cot. Behind bars.

A large spider was sitting on his chest... _wait, did spiders sit_? Miss Muffet's did, right? _Sat down beside her_? The spider on his chest was just...sitting there. A weird fog seemed partly to fill the room, wispy and circulating, like the legs of a giant, gaseous spider, or like a mobile spider's web. Spidery, everything...spidery.

"Go back to sleep, Chuuu-uuck. Back to sleepy-bye-bye. You'll wake up a new man. Goodnight, Chuuu-uuck..."

Chuck lost the singsong voice. He lost everything. At least until he began to dream of spiders. And Freddy Krueger.

And a long, slow-spinning spiral down into an abyss.

ooOoo

" _Ellie?"_

" _Sarah." Ellie's tone made it clear she'd been expecting the call. Beckman must have told her that the cat was not only out of the bag, it was on the table._

" _So, Ellie. Secrets? Intersect secrets? Really? From me? Your brother's wife. Your sister." Her clipped phrases rose in pitch and volume. "Why, Ellie?"_

 _She heard Ellie huff, and she knew her sister-in-law, her friend, was huffing at herself, not at Sarah. "I'm really sorry, Sarah. I didn't think we were keeping anything from you that would ever matter, and I hated to fight with Chuck about this, and we...we went a few rounds about it, believe me. Your husband, my brother…" Ellie's exasperation was evident._

" _Sarah...How do I explain this?...Luckily, you know him and love him, so that will help. Chuck lives in perpetual fear of losing you, and now of losing Rider too. It's not that he lacks faith in you, Sarah. It's just that after everything with Mom and Dad…" She huffed again, clearly not happy with this start on an explanation._

" _When Chuck downloaded that primitive version of the Intersect, Dad told him he was special. Dad didn't mean he was special because he downloaded the Intersect, he meant that he was just...special. But that line has gotten stuck in Chuck's head, and reinforced by all that happened with Team B. He thinks that to whatever extent he is special, it is the Intersect's doing. And he thinks that all the good things in his life ultimately trace back to that inadvertent download when he was a boy. It's like computer-aided Imposter's Syndrome. Chuck's always been humble, generous-minded, willing to put others, the ones he loves especially, ahead of himself. But sometimes his humility becomes...self-abasement. Of course, you know this better than anyone…"_

 _Sarah nodded, then realized Ellie couldn't see her. "Yes, I just thought we'd gotten past all that. What do I have to do to make him understand, once and for all, that I...well, how I feel about him? I feel that way about_ him _, not some feature of his, and certainly not the damn Intersect!" Sarah hated herself a little, just then. All these years, and although she could think the thought that she loved Chuck, and did, every day, often, she still stammered at the point of saying it aloud, still. She could do it, and she did, but...Anyway, she knew that didn't help with Chuck's insecurity, even if he understood. And he did. She knew he did._

 _Ellie's voice dropped, became placating. "Sarah, I think...most of the time…he knows. But he's never gotten over thinking you are a really big deal. If you stop and think about it, that's incredibly sweet, especially after all this time. He never takes you for granted. You know, when we visit, or you do, I always think about how Chuck looks at you when you don't know he's looking, and about how much I want to keep looking at Devon that way: as if my heart was ready to burst with love…"_

 _Sarah felt tears. "I know. I know how much he loves me. I...I...well, you know, Ellie,_ ditto _for me."_

" _I know, Sarah." There was a long hush on the line. Ellie was giving Sarah a moment._

" _So, tell me about this early, this 'primitive' Intersect, Ellie? What is it and what is it doing to Chuck?"_

" _Well, first, Sarah, please tell me what's happened, as you understand it. Give me details where you can."_

 _Sarah started with the arrival of the mail early the evening before and ended with the dead spiders. She told Ellie about the poem and the note in the dust. When she finished the narration, she stopped. "What do you make of it, Ellie?"_

ooOoo

Chuck had no idea what time it was, where he was, who he was. All he knew was terror and horror. Scenes of past terrors and horrors. His parents, gone. Shaw with Sarah in Paris. His dad, dead. Sarah in Russia. Sarah in ice after the Norseman. Sarah leaving him standing by the fountain, gone in search of a life he thought they might never find again.

And then the scenes became possible terrors and horrors. Rider, still-born. Sarah, dead in childbirth. Car wrecks, boating accidents, falls from cliffs, chokings...

And always in the background, even the background of the remembered terrors and horrors, there were spiders, sitting, wrapped in swirling grey vapor, staring at him with their unfeeling congress of eyes.

And then they were upon him, biting him, preparing to make a meal of him, not viciously, but sacramentally. Flesh of their...flesh. And Rider became a spider, and Sarah became a spider, and they, thus transmogrified, they beckoned him to become one of them, join them...and how could he refuse?...He loved them. He went and he was slowly, carefully, wrapped in silken threads, threads of still more terrors, still more horrors.

The scenes became incommunicable, the terror and horror too profound for words, only groans could reach nearly deep enough. His mind and his spirit raged, his teeth gnashed; he was stranded in an outer darkness, a darkness even the darkness feared. India ink paled beside it. And then he collapsed, the rafters of his mind giving way, ghosts dropping.

And then all he could see were spider eyes reflecting his own back at him.

ooOoo

 _Ellie listened to what Sarah told her with very few interruptions. When Sarah finished, she heard Ellie sort of hum to herself, thinking._

" _Look, Sarah, I can only guess. I really never saw any Dad's specs for the primitive Intersect. I've, well, reverse-engineered them, but I'm not sure. I'm thinking that this crazy man, this Wheelwright, must have gotten information from Dad's notes. Used it to figure out a way to control the Intersect, then sent out the flyers and waited. He couldn't be sure Chuck still had it, but he could be sure that if Chuck did, the circulars would affect it, mostly sure, anyway._

" _But here's the thing. That Intersect is deep in Chuck. It can affect him but he's...coped...with it, even for a long time without knowing it. I'm not sure Wheelwright can use it to simply control Chuck like an automaton. It would be more like...I don't know, hypnotic suggestion. Chuck could, would fight it. I'm guessing he was able to control himself enough to leave the poem and to draw in the dust of the safe house. Of course, that's with the effect of the flyers...I don't…"_

" _You don't know what Wheelwright might be able to do to Chuck or make Chuck do once Wheelwright actually has Chuck, right?"_

" _Right. Beckman's sent me all the info on this...Revoltium? Where do these people come up with these names? But I haven't had a chance to do much tinkering or thinking yet. And I have no idea what kind of computer hardware or software Wheelwright might bring to bear…"_

 _Ellie fell into a worried silence; Sarah was already there. Ellie went on after a moment. "But, Sarah, you know that Chuck is...well, he's like a kid, rubbery. He's a lot harder to beat than the bad guys expect."_

 _Sarah smiled a small smile. "Yes, Ellie, he is. There's a fighter in that lover." The smile was present in her voice._

" _I'll be up late working on this, Sarah. Call me if you need to talk. But I'm going to get back to it now."_

" _Ok, Ellie, thanks."_

 _Sarah put her phone down and picked Rider's back up. She slipped it into her pocket and went to his room. She stood over him. Her boy. Hers and Chuck's. The two of them physically made one. She reached out to touch Rider's brown curls and she saw his eyes open._

" _You should go to sleep, sweetie. We'll find your dad. But you need your rest if you are going to help."_

 _He nodded and gestured for her to lean down. He kissed her cheek softly. "I love you, Mom."_

 _She looked into his blue eyes. "I love you too, Rider. You know that, don't you? I know I could say it more, but…"_

 _He gave her a gentle look, a grin. "I know, Mom. I always know. But it is nice to hear it."_

" _You know how much I love your dad too, right?"_

" _I know, Mom. And so does he. But he needs to hear it more than me, I guess." The little guy grinned again. "Dad's kinda gooey inside, you know."_

 _Sarah laughed. "I do know. I've known almost since I first met him, Rider. Now, go to sleep, ok?"_

 _He closed his eyes and then said, "Ok. Going to sleep."_

 _Sarah left Rider's room, leaving his door partially open. She went to her room, found a worn shirt of Chuck's and slipped into it, sighing softly to herself._

ooOoo

She did eventually sleep, a few hours. In the gray dawn, she saw her bedroom ceiling redden, go gray, then redden again, then go gray. She had put Rider's phone on her nightstand when she took it out of her pocket before getting into bed. She saw that a notification light was flashing. She swiped the screen and it glowed responsively.

A map came up, with a pin stuck in it. Next to the pin was a dialogue box. It said, simply, "Find Dad here."

* * *

 **A/N2** That Chuck, huh? Since some of you have guessed, let me say it: this is a Halloween Story. I expect to finish it before the holiday, but still…

Tune in next time for Chapter 5, "Post Modern Prometheus". The preliminaries are now out of the way.

No telling when Chapter 5 will be ready though. Back in the classroom early tomorrow.


	5. Chapter 5: Post-Modern Prometheus

**A/N1** I found some extra time between bouts of Plato and Sartre. So, we move deeper into our twisty Halloween tale. No more updates until next week.

Thanks for the reviews and PMs. I admit I am unsure about the audience for this tale, so it would be a kindness if you dropped a review in the box as you leave, letting me know your thoughts.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **Too Old For This**

* * *

CHAPTER FIVE

 _Post-Modern Prometheus_

* * *

Sarah tried for the millionth time to relax, just a little, to calm herself. The plane was full of people she loved-Rider, Casey, Carina. Beckman. But the center of it all, the man who had made her new life, a life she prized, possible, who had given her her son, was missing, somewhere deep in the Amazon rainforest.

Sarah looked across the narrow aisle at Rider. He was reading _Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life_. Rider loved that character, _The Man of Bronze_. The cruel irony of that particular title did not escape Sarah, though.

Rider was always a fully engaged reader, utterly absorbed. But Sarah noticed him looking out the window frequently, and she could see that he was bouncing one leg again, off and on. As in hers, Chuck was foremost in Rider's mind. She could tell he was trying to at least seem engrossed in the book, and that he was trying to keep his leg still. For her. _He_ was worried about _her_. She wondered again at the way he oscillated between being a boy and being a little man. But then she smiled inwardly. His dad did that too but in the opposite way, between being a man and a little boy. _God, Chuck, be ok!_ Sarah ached for her husband with a marrow-deep ache.

Her boy was worried about her. He was so like Chuck, putting others before himself. Her mind moved of its own accord to Chuck's secret, and to his keeping it from her. She knew that part of the story was just _Chuck's story_ , his difficulty believing that those he loved most would _stay_. He had made progress with that over the years, but she knew that a splinter of anxiety was still in the flesh of Chuck's heart and had never risen to the surface so that it could be finally removed. And she knew, too, that she was, despite herself, another part of the story. It wasn't so much her stumbling still, once in a while, on The Three Words, it was something about _her story_.

 _When she and Chuck had formally dissolved their relationship with the government, CIA, and NSA, she had been picking up a few final things from her small desk in a large room of desks in Langley. She had hardly ever used it, but there were a few things in it she wanted to keep, including the photograph of Chuck that had been paperclipped to the file Graham had handed her when she was sent to Burbank. She had an electronic copy on her phone still, but she wanted the actual physical photograph she had held on that fateful day. Odd: until she'd retrieved the photograph from the desk, she hadn't remembered, but she had held the photograph in her hand that day and felt something stir inside her, shift. Of course, she had ignored it then, as she did so much of her inner life in those days, and she had forgotten it until now. She thrilled anew at Chuck's ability to touch her, at a distance, even before she knew him; it was one of the great and sacred mysteries of her life._

 _She had been standing, staring at the photo, when someone, a man, cleared his throat. He was behind her a little, off to the side, but he could see the photograph too._

" _He was younger then, but he'll always be young; that's just the sort of man he is. It's one reason he is the man for you." Sarah recognized Dr. Leo Dreyfus' distinct voice. She found what he said enigmatic but enticing, and just as she turned to ask Dreyfus to be less oracular, he launched into a bit of a speech. Clearly, he had come prepared to say something to her._

" _Sarah, I am glad I caught you before you left the building. I told them to call me when you did the final paperwork." There was a hint of urgency in Dreyfus' voice, but nothing panicky. Whatever he was going to say he considered important, but not an emergency. "I want to tell you something. Since we will are officially no longer doctor and patient, please consider it as offered from friend to friend." Sarah nodded, waiting._

 _Dreyfus looked around the empty room, nodded as if satisfied, then nonetheless dropped his voice. "Sarah, the CIA goes deep in you. It's not just the life you led as an agent after you were...conscripted," Dreyfus's always badly-hidden dislike of Graham surfaced for a moment in 'conscripted', still intense years later, "it is also the life you led before, the life with your father." He paused to let her consider his words._

" _The categories the CIA uses to organize itself, its missions, its understanding of the world, the categories it uses to train its agents, those categories got into your mind at a still-tender age, and they meshed with the categories your father taught you. That's why this whole…" Dreyfus gestured vaguely, not at the room or anything in it but at Langley itself, "...unnatural life became so natural to you. The CIA's categories became the basic categories for you, not just on the job, but in general, in your whole life: friend and foe, threat and non-threat, secrets and lies...handler and asset."_

 _Dreyfus cleared his throat and looked carefully into her eyes. "Chuck has never been your asset and he has always been your asset. I know it's a paradox. I also know you live it daily. You need to remember how easy it is for you now, still, and maybe always, to default to handling him, to making him your asset. Fight that."_

 _Dreyfus had, much to Sarah's shock, then given her a hug. He whispered to her hoarsely, "I want you to know I'm...invested in you two. I have seen so much misery on this job, so much, but I have only this once seen the promise of so much happiness. I want you two to keep that promise, keep it for each other, of course, but a little for me too." With that, Dreyfus had pulled away and, without a backward glance, disappeared into the bowels of Langley._

 _She never saw Dreyfus again, although Beckman once did let it slip that although he had retired, he sometimes contacted her to find out how Chuck and Sarah were doing._

 _His words rang in her ears even now, out of memory. "Fight that."_

Sarah _had_ fought it. But she also knew that Dreyfus had chosen his words thoughtfully: 'default'. Sometimes still, when Sarah let her guard down or got upset, when she was afraid for Chuck, she became Agent Walker again. It was less frequent these days. Rare. Most of the time, Agent Walker was an increasingly shadowy figure, a distant, insubstantial memory.

But now and then she materialized, and Sarah knew that her reappearance was a stumbling-block to Chuck each time, that it made him question himself. Chuck's secreted Intersect was a response to the shadow of Agent Walker. Maybe that didn't quite make sense, examined cooly and rationally, but it was true, she realized. He had hung onto the Intersect, no doubt because of Ellie's worries about removing it harming _him_ , but Sarah knew it was more because he was worried about it harming _them_.

ooOoo

Casey sat down in the seat opposite her. He had gripped Rider's shoulder as he went past him, and Sarah was warmed and touched by the look of fondness and respect Rider had sent Casey. She knew how much Casey cared for Rider.

Casey sat down heavily, trying to keep worry off his face since he knew Rider was watching them. "I'm glad you and Beckman reached out. Didn't get a chance to say that earlier, in the press and confusion. We'll get him. Clever boy, putting that tracker on the phone."

Rider, overhearing, joined in. "Yeah, I had no idea what Dad meant when he told me that I could use my phone to find him."

"I think he had in mind the mall or an amusement park, Rider, but still…" Sarah looked from Rider back to Casey. "I just wish the signal had been more exact, and lasted longer."

"Me, too. We know where he is within a ten-mile radius, but ten miles of dank jungle." Sarah's eyes widened a bit and Casey caught himself. "But, no problem, we'll find him, get him out."

But there was a problem and Sarah knew it all too well. The tracker Chuck had used, whatever it was (it seemed to be one he had built himself) was not constructed to provide a location at such a distance, and so the signal was 'diffuse', and there was no way to pinpoint his location. Even worse, the signal had faded and eventually died. No one was sure why. So all they had was a vicinity, a vicinity in some of the most hostile, difficult terrain on the planet.

The one hopeful fact was that Wheelwright had to have a way to reach whatever hole he had crawled into. There had to be some path, trail, or something. Some way to reach Chuck. There had to be. Sarah prayed Wheelwright hadn't moved him.

Beckman had flown them all to LA. They met there, Beckman included. Although this was not officially a government-sanctioned op, Beckman was running it and funding it. She'd made sure that Casey and Carina could help and then brought them in. Sarah was profoundly grateful. She was so distracted by worry she wasn't sure she could have planned it all, overseen it.

Sarah had initially planned to leave Rider with Gina, but then the thought of being without both her husband and her son chilled her heart. She would keep Rider out of harm's way, of course, but she would also keep him near. She felt better, calmer, just being able to see him. Yes, it created complications, but they would just have to deal with those. She needed her boy. He needed her.

Sarah sighed. Chuck had been taken Friday night or Saturday morning. They'd fought the spiders on Saturday. Sunday morning she had discovered Chuck's location on Rider's phone. The day on Sunday had been spent organizing herself and Rider, and coordinating with Beckman. Monday she and Rider had reached LA. They spent the day in planning, waiting for Casey's flight and then for Carina's and Beckman's. Tuesday had been consumed by more planning, and gathering needed supplies. Finally, very early on Wednesday morning, they had taken to the air, heading south, to Brazil, to search for Chuck in a jungle once described by an early explorer as "The Green Hell."

ooOoo

They eventually arrived at Cuiaba, Brazil. They deplaned and climbed into SUVs that met them on the tarmac. Men showed up who moved their supplies into the rear of the vehicles. They left the men on the tarmac and they drove into and through the city. After passing out of the city, they kept driving until the landscape became less and less marked by human habitation. They were headed vaguely toward Bolivia. As the roads became increasingly primitive, the forest around them grew in density. It seemed...it was...a living presence, brooding slow and long and verdantly, beckoning and defying visitation. Dusk was gathering thick and dark.

They stopped finally in a small village. There was a large wooden structure there, a house, and Casey pulled into the dirt yard in front of it. They got out of the cars. Rider was staring wide-eyed all around him. Carina was sniffing in distaste. Beckman simply marched into the house. Sarah and Casey followed her, and Rider and Carina followed them.

When they got inside, Beckman had crossed the room to a table and had taken a map from the briefcase she carried. She unfolded it and smoothed it out.

"We are on one edge of the vicinity of Chuck's signal. This is almost certainly the way that Wheelwright would have entered the jungle. Someone here-we'll start asking tomorrow-will have seen him. It's too late tonight to start that process. The man through whom I secured this house will bring some of the villagers by tomorrow. Tonight, we need to rest. Tomorrow, Casey and Sarah will head into the jungle, assuming we find Wheelwright's trail. Rider, you will stay here to help me and Carina. There's an all-terrain vehicle we can use here, and I have already made it clear that we need it. But eventually, wheels will not work, only feet will. We have to hope that somewhere in the interior, there is a passable route to Wheelwright. There must be. We just have to find it. I have some calls to make. You should get some rest."

ooOoo

Sarah and Rider had a room to themselves with two cots in it. Sarah and he pushed the cots side-by-side, then got ready for bed. The cots had mosquito-netting. They got in and each put the netting over herself or himself. They rested there in the dark and humid heat.

"Mom?"

"Yes, Rider. What is it, sweetie?"

"Tell me again it's going to be alright. Tell me we'll find Dad and go home."

Sarah had tried always to tell Rider the truth (at least, when she thought he was old enough to hear it). She and Chuck had agreed. They had both been raised among lies. But she did not know what to say now. After a moment, she heard her voice, but sounding like Agent Walker, not like Sarah Bartowski. Cool, focused, dangerous.

"I will find him, Rider. I will bring him home."

She could sense that what she said had reassured him, despite the sound. They were quiet again for a moment and then Rider spoke once more.

"You know, Mom, sometimes you _are_ kinda scary." Sarah felt her chest tighten but Rider went on. "I'm glad that you can be scary sometimes. You're never scary to me. And I know you can save Dad."

Sarah blinked as if suddenly blinded, there in the dark. She held herself still and listened as Rider's breathing evened out, and he gave in to exhaustion. Then she did too.

ooOoo

Chuck woke up. Actually, woke up.

But he had no idea where he was. Above him, he could see bars, and beyond them, some kind of see-through plastic. He suddenly thought of spiders, and he sat bolt upright, wiping at his chest with his hands in a panic. But there was nothing there. He looked around. He was in a long, low cage, built out of some kind of wood. Around the cage was what looked like a giant plastic sandwich bag. He could sit up on his cot, but he would not be able to stand. Fresh air, heavy and humid, but not stale, was blowing across his face. Outside the cage and the plastic, although obscured by the plastic, he could see a room. There were several laptops open on a long wooden table, and a large collection of vials and bottles, many containing odd-colored liquids, on the table too. There was a large cylinder near his cage, and there were tubes running from it to the plastic wrapped around him. He was sweaty and he felt...bizarre. He heard birds outside, although he could not quite tell from which direction he heard them.

His head began to ache horribly. He squeezed his eyes shut, but tears escaped because of the pain. But then the ache began to subside. Soon it was just a throbbing, painful background against which everything else of which he was conscious stood.

Chuck had no shoes on. His Chuck's had vanished, along with his socks. He looked at his arms. There were red marks up and down them. Some looked like injection spots, others like...bites.

He let himself fall back onto the cot. _Sarah! Rider!_ What the hell had happened to him. He forced himself to think through the throbbing pain. The last thing he could remember was making love to Sarah after they had gone to bed on... _what was it_? Friday night. He blushed at the memory and smiled at it too, despite everything. _Sarah!_ What day was it? He had absolutely no idea. He forced himself again to think. What had happened? Slowly, as if rising up from an ancient tar pit, memories began to surface.

Spiders. A page of poetry. A finger writing in the dust. A singsong voice. Horrible dreams. More and more horrible dreams. Spiders again.

He had no memory of being taken and he showed no standard signs of physical violence. How had it happened? But then another memory surfaced from the deeps of the tar pit, temporally discontinuous from the others, but somehow relevant. A memory of shapes and pictures...a memory of the Intersect. But it wasn't the one Bryce sent him. It wasn't any version that he could recall...Unless it was the first one, the one he'd downloaded when he sneaked onto his Dad's computer. The first one. His secret. The one thing he'd kept from Sarah. The big thing.

He'd never remembered it like this before. He remembered that he had watched the screen on his Dad's computer. He remembered feeling odd afterward, and his Dad telling him that he was special. But he'd never been able really to remember what he had seen, not until now. He did not know what it meant. The memory came trailing feelings of guilt. His first thought was that is was guilt he remembered feeling for sneaking onto his Dad's computer, but then he realized that it was not the memory of guilt but a current feeling of it. And he knew it was guilt that he had carried ever since he begged Ellie and Beckman to let him keep this one Intersect secret. It was guilt about keeping it from Sarah. _No secrets, no lies_ : but he had repeated that with his fingers crossed, so to speak. _No secrets, no lies_ : except this one. He should have told her. He should tell her. He would tell her if he ever got out of this Hefty sandwich bag. His head began to throb more insistently, and he lost the ability to direct his own thoughts. He slipped back into a deeply troubled sleep. He dreamt of kaleidoscopic bursts of images...and legions of crawling spiders.

ooOoo

Chuck woke up again. The pain in his head had died away. Thank God, he hadn't. He was alive.

He sat up again. It was dark. His arms itched. He scratched at them absently. He could tell very little about what was around him, although he assumed he was where he had been before. The cot seemed the same. Eventually, he could see that one of the laptops was turned so that its screen faced him. He tried to make out what was on the screen. It took a minute. It was an anatomical drawing of a spider. Chuck shuddered, a memory he couldn't quite make out affecting him nonetheless.

And then he heard them. The light from the screen was just enough, as his eyes adjusted, to make them out. Spiders, many, many spiders, all crawling on the plastic. The _other side_ of the plastic, Chuck realized, and he almost shouted in relief. That's when he realized his throat was raw and burning. On a low table next to his cot, there was a canteen. He opened it and sniffed. Water. He smelled nothing else, although who knew what might be in it? Still, he had to have it. He tilted the canteen up and drank thirstily. When he had slaked his thirst, he put the canteen down. He realized the spiders were watching. Just then, the laptop screen went dark. If the spiders were still watching him, and he could feel them doing so, he couldn't return the favor. He was blind in the dark. After a little while, he fell asleep again.

ooOoo

"Chuuu-uuck! Oh, Chuuu-cky! Time to take your medicine." Chuck willed his eyes open. He could see wisps of vapor or gas all around him. He throat was scorched. He tried not to breathe, succeeded for a bit, then had to gulp air and the gas in. His vision stretched and distorted. He heard himself giggling, then sobbing. Later, a moment, a millennium, he felt something with webs, no, wires, get attached to him. And then he yielded to the pain and blackness, and to dreams again of images and of spiders, of spider images and spidery images and imagistic spiders and….

ooOoo

"So, Dr. Wheelwright, is it working?" Chuck heard the voices like the dialogue in a bad play.

"Yes, it is working. It is slower than I hoped, but we are getting there. The depth at which the Intersect sits in his psyche gives us access to regions below consciousness but which affect consciousness, to parts of his brain so primitive they are shared with...other, lower life forms. His primitive Internet has allowed us to pull up the false bottom of consciousness and to let new things crawl in."

"Like these?" The voice seemed to be pointing.

"Yes, just like these. Slowly, slowly, I am mixing two minds that would have seemed impossible to mix, minds of completely different kinds, even of different orders. One arachnid, the other human. The mind that will result will be arachnoid-humanoid. A new kind of monster, one born from nightmares and fit to create them. Revoltium and the Intersect combined."

"Very good, Dr. Wheelwright, very good. Soon?"

"Yes, soon. He will be the prophet of Arachnophilia: the love of spiders. I am a kind of Prometheus, you see. I am not stealing the fire of the gods and giving it to human beings. I am stealing the fire of human consciousness and giving it to the eight-legged, a new light in their dark. All minds eventually one, all distinctions abolished!"

Silence. The other voice cleared its throat before speaking. "And you will sell him to the highest bidder? To me...I hope? I mean I have funded all of this."

"Of course, of course. To the highest bidder. To you, if it is you. Do you really believe I create monsters for their own sake?"

The other voice seemed to start to say something, then chose not to respond.

* * *

 **A/N2** Tune in next time for Chapter 6, "The Green Hell". Creepers and venomous critters and crazy villains. Adventure, adventure. Creepers, yes, but less creepy, if you know what I mean. Leave a review, please, to help keep the spiders at bay.


	6. Chapter 6: The Green Hell

**A/N1** "In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the _spider_ sleeps tonight…" Everybody sing!

"A-weema-weh, a-weema-weh, a-weema-weh, a-weema-weh…"

Ok, ok, so no one's in a singing mood but me? Well, here's some more of our story. If you won't sing, at least leave me a review. Thanks, as always, for reading. Hope no one minds the earlier update.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **Too Old For This**

* * *

CHAPTER SIX

 _The Green Hell_

* * *

Sarah slumped in sweaty exhaustion.

Never before had she hated green this much-not even years ago in when Chuck and Casey and Morgan worked at the Buy More. And she lived in that Oz-green, CIA-supplied apartment in Burbank.

Now, she was ensnared by olive, sage, hunter, emerald, chartreuse, viridian, turquoise: a plenum of greens, tongues of green flame. _The Green Hell._

Had she been soaring somehow above it all, not ensnared, able simply to see the colors, she might have found it worth contemplating, gazingstock. _Color is its own reward_. She'd heard that somewhere. But these greens were up against her, in her face and hair and clothes trying actively and malignantly to harm her. And to harm Casey, who was standing slumped beside her on one of the few bits of relatively bare earth they'd seen in hours.

Casey looked around morosely. He was sweating and grimy, his face streaked. Sarah also knew he was hurting. They'd inadvertently stirred up a nest of bullet ants, and one of them had stung the back of Casey's hand, his gun hand. That kind of ant sting was supposed to be the worst sting on earth, thirty times worse than, say, a wasp sting. And it hurt for a long time, sometimes more than a day. His hand was so swollen and sore that it had become practically useless, at best a club. But, in true Casey style, he'd not so much as mentioned the sting or the pain of it after it happened. He'd cursed a blue streak in the green at the moment it happened, of course. But not a groan or sigh since.

The claustrophobic green hellscape that imprisoned them was exuberantly, ominously fertile, almost impenetrable due to the wild abundance of plants and trees and crawling things. They had trekked into the jungle at first in the all-terrain vehicle - actually an ancient but specially equipped Land Cruiser, somehow kept running for what must have been three decades. Too soon, though, the jungle made traveling further in the Land Cruiser impossible.

She and Casey had shouldered their packs, marked the location in the GPS, and gone deeper on foot.

They'd gotten lucky. Not far from the place where they left the Land Cruiser, they found a trail, recently blazed and even more recently used. They had reason to be hopeful. It almost had to be Wheelwright's trail. Of course, calling it a trail was seriously misleading. It was instead a serpentine, treacherous thread through the green, easy to lose and, although easier to travel than undisturbed jungle, still a constant, almost overwhelming challenge. They were forced to crouch or stretch or jump of crawl just to keep moving. And the creatures...God, everywhere, omnipresent, unavoidable.

Despite her long sleeves and long pants, Sarah had suffered various scratches, bites, and stings. She kept brushing tiny ticks off her. She'd been doing it all day. Her cap, tight cuffs, shirt, and pants, had not kept out the annoying and sometimes infectious sandflies. And the mosquitoes - well, there was little to do except to try to wave them away from her exposed neck, face, ears, and hands. She and Casey were both doing that as they stood there, waving their hands. She smiled grimly. If someone could see them, they probably looked like dueling orchestra conductors in a vast green auditorium.

"I tell you, Sarah," Casey growled, low and soft, "I have a strong feeling that we're being followed. I felt that way since not long after we left the vehicle. I worry that some of Wheelwright's men got behind us and that we're going to get pinched, men behind us, men before us. But there's no way to see what's behind you or ahead of you in here."

Sarah nodded. She'd had the same feeling, though not as strong as Casey, evidently. She peered behind them, as she had off and on the whole time, but she could see nothing more than a wall of plants and vines. She'd thought she had heard a noise, once or twice, but the thickness of the vegetation and the ubiquitous dampness and humidity seemed quickly to smother sound. No sounds carried far. She hadn't been sure she heard something. She was so swamped in plants and insects she was beginning to lose herself, her sense of herself, blinded by encircling green, deafened by the mosquito buzz.

ooOoo

Chuck realized he was talking, having a conversation. With Freddy Krueger.

No, no, not Freddy. But someone who looked just like... _Stanley Wheelwright!_

The Aisle of Terror.

Jeff and Lester.

 _Interspecies relationships._

Chuck felt immediately puzzled. _Interspecies relationships?_ Why had that particular video display from the Aisle come back to him, just now?

"So you see, I have made you anew. Part man, part spider. Not that you will sprout extra legs or any legs or get all... _hairy_." Wheelwright mock-shuddered. "Ha! Well, unless of course, you grow a beard. If you did get hairy... _that_ would be scary, though, and funny. The _Not-So-Itsy-Bitsy_ Spider! You must be what, six-foot-three? That'd be one humongous spider. Shelob! No, no," Wheelwright smacked Chuck's leg with his hand, " _He_ lob! God, I crack myself up." Wheelwright guffawed quietly for a moment, enjoying his joke. Chuck suspected that Wheelwright had cracked himself up, once too often, a long, long time ago.

"You see, Chuck, you will soon be able to _communicate_ with spiders and they with you. They will obey. They _will_. It's quite the tale.

"You see, I came here to hide, to work, and I gassed a spider with Revoltium quite accidentally. I was so surprised and upset, I got careless; I gassed myself too, just a gasp, really. And for a moment, I could _feel_ the spider and it could _feel_ me. We could become no more acquainted but it gave me an idea.

"I started experimenting on the spiders using the gas. I found that even though I could not direct their behavior, enough exposure to the gas _altered_ their behavior. They became more aggressive, less frightened. They could be trained to a degree, more than a pet rock, less than a pet dog." Wheelwright's chatter slowed as he thought, "Think of an eight-legged... _cat_ , yes, something like that, as trainable as _an eight-legged cat_. A _not-so-pussy_ cat." Wheelwright cracked himself up again and smacked Chuck's leg. Then Wheelwright started chattering.

Wheelwright's hands were busy as he chattered. Attaching wires, adjusting settings on his primary laptop screen. Tinkering with the nozzle on the gas canister. It dawned on Chuck finally that he was sitting up in a chair, not on the cot. He was not in the cage and no longer inside the giant plastic sandwich bag.

But he couldn't seem to will his body into motion. He was not even in control of his blinking, although he did blink from time-to-time. He was having an inside-of-body experience, and it was much weirder and more upsetting than an out-of-body experience. Not that Chuck had had many out-of-body experiences, other than during sexy times with his wife. Like last Friday night.

How long ago was that? _Sarah!_ Every fiber of him wanted to find her, get back to her, but he could not initiate any motion, not even in a finger.

It turned out that Wheelwright could initiate Chuck-motion, however. He told Chuck to raise his arm, so that he could attach a wire to the side of Chuck's chest, and Chuck's arm went up. He told Chuck to shift his leg, his leg shifted. Chuck realized with a horrible, sinking feeling that his current situation was roughly that of a puppet if it were suddenly gifted with consciousness, but lacked volitional control of its puppet body, no way to pull its own strings.

But just as his heart sank, Chuck's mind filled again with what he had seen on the screen when he downloaded the Intersect the very first time. The spray of images moved quickly, but there were fewer than in any later download, Bryce's or afterward. Something about the images seemed suggestive, significant, meaningful, but he could not quite capture it. Then the memory disappeared, leaving Chuck stranded, entombed in his own body once more. And then he felt himself slipping away, even as he heard his own voice, responding to a question from Wheelwright. Slipping, slipping...slipping.

ooOoo

It happened again a little later. He was suddenly there, trapped in his body once more. Wheelwright was still talking. "So, while you were out, I dosed you heavily with Revoltium. After it had done its work, I let my little friends feast on you, then I administered...just the right amount…" Wheelwright's voice climbed in pitch and he held his hand between his face and Chuck, placing his index finger close to but not touching his thumb, "...of anti-venom. And then I engaged your father's legacy to you, your Intersect…" Wheelwright paused and looked toward the ceiling.

"I suppose it must puzzle you, how I could have known you still had the Intersect. You see, I found files of your father's. Pure serendipity. It took me a little time to suss out what he was doing, but eventually, I did. He and I faced the same problem, but from different angles. What problem does a man have outside a closed room he wants to enter, and what problem does he share with a man inside the closed room who wants to leave? Oh, come now, Chuck, you must have an answer." Wheelwright started humming the Jeopardy theme music. Chuck knew the answer but couldn't move his mouth and it did not move on its own this time.

"The door! Oh, sorry, the answer must be in the form of a question. 'The door?' You see, your father wanted to put things _into_ the mind, knowledge, skills; I wanted to bring things _out of_ the mind, fears, nightmares. But we both faced the closed door. I realized your father had found a new and fascinating way to open the mind, and thus a new and fascinating way to unleash its horrors. In his notes (why do you think the CIA had them? Why did they throw them away?)," Wheelwright shrugged at his own parenthetical questions and went on, "in his notes, he entered that you had downloaded the Intersect. He also had continuing observations about your health and behavior. You accepted it well, even seamlessly, you know."

"Your father hypothesized early on that removing it would probably have been a good idea only if it had been done immediately after the download. Think of it like this Chuck, as your father did: you were still growing, and your mind grew up into and all around that early Intersect. The later ones sat atop your grown mind, as it were, but that first one, no, it was _inside_ you, deep inside. Your father's thoughts about all this were fascinating. I have the file here somewhere. Perhaps I will read some of it to you later. Perhaps as a bedtime story?"

Chuck groaned, but only inwardly, of course. How had his life gotten so screwed up? How?

He was going to have Freddy Krueger read him Intersect tales help him go to sleep.

ooOoo

While Sarah and Casey finished loading the Land Cruiser, and not long after Sarah kissed him goodbye, Carina had gotten Rider to agree to go to his room and read. The boy was worried sick, and still tired, and Sarah had asked Carina to try to get him to rest, and think about something other than Chuck and the rescue.

Rider headed to his room, picking up his _Doc Savage_ book from the spot where he'd put it on the table, next to Beckman's topographical map. He went into his room and shut the door. A few minutes later, the Land Cruiser coughed to life and Casey and Sarah were gone.

Carina and Beckman had been able to keep track of them for a while with radios, but then the signals faltered, died, and the radios became useless. It was unclear what the problem was. Their GPS trackers still seemed to be working, though, so although they were not in voice contact, they could follow as the two trekked into the deeper jungle.

Carina peeked into Rider's room. He had fallen asleep on his cot, burrowed beneath his covers, his book on his chest. Smiling to herself, she thought about the visit she and Bryan and Simon visited Chuck and Sarah and Rider in Montana. It had been a blue and golden summer, the boys tearing around outside or tearing up inside, constantly talking, playing basketball or video games. Being boys and best friends. She and Bryan had spent long cool evenings outside on the deck with Chuck and Sarah, grilling, laughing, drinking and talking. The deck faced the mountains, and there was something about those mountains under that sky that affected a person. It affected Carina. She looked forward to going back, and she knew Bryan and Simon did too.

Carina went back into the main room to help Beckman keep track of Chuck and Sarah's progress in the jungle.

ooOoo

Sarah trudged behind Casey. She could see his back and the green all around him. She was bone-tired. It felt like every part of her either ached, burned or itched. She'd mostly stopped fighting the mosquitoes. She'd wave her hand distractedly by her face now and then, but it was more reflex than anything else. She found it hard to believe she was trekking through another jungle looking for Chuck. Thailand should have been enough for a lifetime.

"Casey, you remember Thailand?" Sarah asked, not because she thought he was likely to have forgotten, but rather to give herself and him something to think about for a few minutes other than the dank misery of putting one foot in front of the other.

"Sure, Sarah. Morgan and I found you in that pit, with that cobra." Casey grunt-laughed. "Giant Blonde She-Male."

Sarah smirked sweatily. Chuck rather liked that title, and she didn't mind it, especially when he used it, whispered it in her ear during...certain private moments.

"Right, and Morgan was the Magnet."

Casey grunted again, but it contained no laughter. He kept marching. "Yeah, but Morgan's always the Magnet. It's the role nature intended." Another grunt-laugh.

Sarah couldn't help herself. "Seems to have been the Magnet for Alex, too." Casey stopped and turned on her slowly, wiping sweat from his eyes. He tried to glare at her, but couldn't summon up the energy.

"Look, _Bartowski_ , I live with my daughter's choices, I don't make them…"

Sarah took off her cap for a moment and waved it in front of her face, hoping to cool herself and perhaps interrupt the mosquitoes' blood quest. "Oh, C'mon, Casey, you know you love the little, bearded guy."

Casey was about to speak when his eyes got big. He tackled Sarah to the ground, just before an arrow whizzed through the spot where she had been standing and embedded itself with a powerful thwack into a tree trunk.

Casey managed to turn her and himself as they went down so that when they hit the ground, he was not on top of her, but beside her. Their old teamwork kicked in. Sarah rolled into the heavy vegetation one way, Casey the other.

The backpack she had on made rolling a challenge but she did it, praying that she wouldn't roll into onto or into some venomous creature. She got her gun out of her shoulder holster and waited. The wet quiet of the jungle took over. Nothing happened.

And then she heard muffled footsteps coming toward her. She knew the vegetation and her green clothes together made her hard to see. They would know approximately where she was at best; they would not know exactly. She was able to see through a kind of tunnel in the leaves. The face she saw was unfamiliar, big, heavily-jowled and pasty, sweating profusely, his clothes all soaked and sticking to his thick body. He had a pistol in his hand, a bow on one shoulder, and a quiver of arrows on his back. He gestured behind him, gave a signal to be silent.

He started moving very slowly, closing in on Sarah's hiding place. Step, step. Sarah steadied herself, her breathing. She could kill him now, but she did not know how many others might be with him or what weapons they would have. If she could stand it, wait it out, maybe those he signaled would show themselves, and she and Casey would know the odds. Maybe they'd even show themselves nearer Casey, naturally dividing themselves as targets. Step, step. She waited.

She could smell the man, not figuratively, but _for real_. He reeked of sweat and tobacco. He was only a few steps from her. At this point, she would have to shoot him at point-blank range. She wished she could get to her knife, but she couldn't risk the noise it might make or the time it would take. Then she saw another man; he was over closer to Casey. The man was skinny, with dark hair and eyes, and several days growth of beard. He had a pistol in his hand too.

When Sarah looked at his hand, she realized that she and Casey had a problem she had forgotten. Casey's hurt hand was his gun hand. He was not going to be able to fight that way; he'd have to risk melee. _Damn._ That meant Sarah would have to be sure to drop her man so that he could not get a shot off when Casey exposed himself.

She had just had the thought when the big man fired into the vegetation surrounding her. He had seen her, or he had guessed well. He missed, but only barely. Sarah scooted back into the vegetation as much as she could without creating too much of a disturbance. But she could see that the big man had his gun trained on her. _On_ her. If he fired again, he'd hit her.

"Ok, girly," his voice was heavy and oily, "get out of there and I won't plug you."

Sarah hoped Casey was still hidden and ready. She stood up out of the vegetation abruptly, making sure she made as much noise as she could, hoping to startle the two men, delay their response. At the same moment, Casey lunged out of his hiding place and drove himself into the midsection of the skinny man. Sarah's pistol caught in a thin vine as she stood up, and although the vine snapped, it delayed her. A mere moment, but...she realized she was too late, too slow. The big man had had his gun on her all along, She saw his eyes narrow.

She thought of Chuck and Rider.

But before the man could pull the trigger, a large branch crashed down on his head. Sarah fired into the big man's chest as he lurched to the side, his lurch more from surprise than the strength of the blow to his head. Behind the man, Sarah caught a glimpse of a jungle creature, quick and green and brown. It swung the branch again, knocking the gun from the big man's hand. The big man went down to his knees. Sarah fired once more and the man fell face-forward onto the mucky ground.

Sarah wheeled toward the creature, gun up. It was small. And then she noticed its blue eyes.

"Don't shoot, Mom! It's me!"

"Rider?"

Then Sarah heard Casey's voice, her echo. "Rider?"

The skinny man was out cold on the ground. Casey was still seated on top of him.

The green and brown creature smiled a weak, white-toothed, blue-eyed smile. "Yeah, Mom. It's me."

He swayed a little. Sarah ran to him and caught him as he collapsed.

ooOoo

"I know you are gone now, old Chuck. The new Chuck has taken your place, spider-Chuck. Too bad, in a way, I'd have enjoyed your reaction to your replacement. I wonder how your blonde bride will like her new insectoid husband? Probably not as much as the woman who married Doctor Frankenstein in that Mel Brooks movie liked the altered Doctor. What was that movie? _Young Frankenstein,_ right? Well, your having gotten Intersected and insected isn't going to result in _that_ anatomical enhancement. No enlarged _stinger._ I suspect she will be quite disappointed...overall…" Wheelwright turned back to his computer.

But Chuck, the old Chuck, knew that he, the old Chuck, _was not gone._ _I'm here, Sarah! I'm here! Find me!_

Whatever Wheelwright had done, it hadn't worked, or it hadn't worked as Wheelwright expected. The screen on Chuck's father's computer appeared again before Chuck's mind's eye. The spray of images. He started concentrating on them one-by-one. He had a growing conviction some _kind_ of answer, some kind of _answer,_ was hidden in them.

* * *

 **A/N2** Oh my! I hope everyone is enjoying reading this as much I am writing it. If so, please leave me a review, even if that's all it says. Tune in next time for Chapter 7, "Jungle Fever".

"A-weema-weh, a-weema-weh, a-weema-weh, a-weema-weh…"


	7. Chapter 7: Jungle Fever

**A/N1** "In the jungle, the mighty jungle…" Still can't quite get that song out of my head, even after working it out on the guitar and playing it a few times. (Shout out to Mojo01 and his trombone!) Maybe a new chapter will help. We are past the halfway point of our little Halloween tale.

Thanks for reading and reviewing. And for the PMs too.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **Too Old For This**

* * *

CHAPTER SEVEN

 _Jungle Fever_

* * *

Carina worked alongside Beckman, tracking Sarah and Casey's progress deeper into the jungle and helping Beckman try to work out the radio problem, but try what they would, they could not get the radio to work. The even worse news was that Sarah and Casey's GPS signal was weakening steadily.

Beckman used a portable satellite uplink to put in a call to Cuiaba, and a tech team was going to be dispatched in the morning, but that meant no communication all night. Outside, shadows were beginning to lengthen.

They ate breakfast before Sarah and Casey left, and ate something vaguely fruity and spicy that the villagers had brought them for lunch. Carina had put a bowl of it on the table near Rider's door, but he was still asleep.

Carina now realized that it had been a few hours... She hadn't talked to Rider since just after he went to his room that morning. She hadn't wanted to wake him, so she hadn't spoken to him. She began to feel like a patsy in a scheme. She left Beckman muttering to herself about technology and went to the room where Rider was sleeping. She knew when she got up to the cot that he was not there. Two pillows under the covers and the _Doc Savage_ book, open and strategically placed on top, so as to block the sightline to where Rider's head would be. Gone. He was so good at tending to himself, and she had gotten so caught up in what she was doing with Beckman, and she'd been a little distracted too, lost in missing her own little family.

Carina was both immediately terrified and immediately angry. _Damn, damn._ She went in to deliver the bad news to Beckman. _Bartowskis!_

ooOoo

Sarah lowered Rider carefully to the ground. She realized that he was not exactly green and brown, but rather that he was dressed in a green shirt and green pants, and that he had mud caked heavily on all of his exposed skin, hands, neck, face and ears. She checked him over quickly. His pulse was a little weak but didn't frighten Sarah. She could see some bug bites, but not major injuries or even serious scratches.

She was aware, as she examined Rider, of Casey tying up the skinny man he had knocked unconscious. When he finished, he came over and began checking Rider too. After a moment, he looked at her.

"He's ok, Sarah. Dehydrated and hungry, I bet, and maybe a bit in shock from what he did and what he saw. But honestly, he otherwise looks better than we do. We should have thought of mud instead of using that goddamn bug spray. All it did was make me stink like perfume. The old ways are usually the best."

Just as Casey finished, Rider began to come around. Sarah pulled up his pants leg and found a couple of leeches on the back of one of his legs. She grabbed her knife, and before she could ask for it, Casey handed her the old brass Zippo he always had on missions. She heated it up. Rider's eyes focused and she saw him watching her.

"Be still for a minute, Rider. This may sting, but I won't burn you. I just need to get them off you." She flicked the lighter open and began to heat the blade of her knife. Rider nodded. Hoping to keep his mind off what she was doing, she started asking him questions. "You were following us?"

Rider bit his lip and nodded. "So you crossed that little stream we crossed early on?" He nodded.

She and Casey had waded the stream then, in vegetation on the other side, they'd checked each other for leeches and found none.

"I stood in the stream for a few minutes. I got some mud to cover myself, to keep the bugs off me. Like Ranger Rick said." It was Sarah's turn to nod. Rider spent a week last summer at a wilderness survival camp, and Rick was the Forest Ranger who had taken them out for a couple of days during the camp. Sarah touched the heated blade to one of the leeches and it curled, releasing itself from Rider. Sarah flicked it away. Rider grimaced but made no sound. Casey, who was now kneeling behind Rider, encouraged Rider to lean back into him, squeezed Rider's shoulder. Sarah repeated the procedure. She took off her pack and grabbed a tube of antibiotic cream and rubbed it into the red spots. Rider looked at her with so much trust she felt her hands shaking. How had she gotten him into this? How had he gotten himself into this?

"Rider?" She fixed her gaze to him.

He shrugged and grinned weakly. "I hid in the back of the Cruiser when you and Casey were finishing up. I went out the window of my room. When you left the car, I didn't know what to do. I thought maybe I would just wait in the car. And then, a little while after you left, I saw these two guys," Rider motioned with his shoulder, "come out of the jungle at another spot and then follow you. I was afraid for you…"

"You should have waited in the Cruiser. You should never have gotten into the Cruiser." Sarah snapped, her tone sharper than she really intended. Rider winced, but then Casey laughed. Not just a grunt, a full-on belly laugh.

"The size of the kid changes, but not much else for you, huh, Sarah?" He rubbed Rider's curls and smiled. "What's done is done. How are you feeling?"

Rider answered Casey but kept his eyes on his mom. "Thirsty. I was scared to drink anything. And hungry." Sarah saw his gaze creep away to the big man, dead on the shag carpet green floor of the jungle.

She grabbed her water and gave it to Rider. He drank deep. Then she handed him an energy bar, tearing the packaging open. He bit into it eagerly.

"So you were following the men who were following us?"

"Yeah, it was kinda funny, like a wet, sloppy parade…" _He is_ your _son, Chuck Bartowski._ But even inside, Sarah could not retain any anger. She was just glad he was safe. They could have a serious talk about obedience later. Right now, she was relieved.

"You saved me, Rider." She smiled at him. "Are you sure you're ok ?" She noticed that his hands were trembling a little. But he nodded and grinned with a bit more strength. She knew they'd need to talk about what he had seen, too. She was worried about it, worried about it a lot. But there was no time, and this was not the place. Around her, the greens of the jungle were slowly becoming darker, shadows were blacker. The night was coming.

She and Casey looked at each other and he nodded at her. While she continued to check Rider over, Casey got up and moved the big man's body into the vegetation. He carried the skinny man over to a large tree next to the path but at a distance from the body, and propped him up against it. Sarah was calmed a bit by Rider's attention being focused on eating the energy bar, not on Casey's doings.

Sarah got up and walked over to Casey. She kept her voice low. "What do we do, John?"

He gave her an abstracted, calculating look. "I guess we leave that guy here. We can't take him with us, too much potential for trouble, especially now that we have a third. We can mark the spot. He'll just have to take his chances. He'd have killed us.

"We need to get up into a tree, off the ground. It won't be a pleasant night, but I'm guessing we can't be far away now. Wheelwright had to get equipment here somehow; he couldn't have carried it forever. My guess is that he has some other way of getting things in, maybe by air, but even so, he wouldn't have wanted to be too far from civilization. Like Thoreau, just a mile or so from Concord, still able to hear Emerson's dinner bell..."

Sarah's eyes widened. " _Thoreau_ , Casey? Really?"

He grunted. "I told you once before, Bartowski, I wasn't hatched. Who says I can't like the Transcendentalists? Good Americans." He scanned ahead. "Let's try to get a little more distance in and then we'll find a place to spend the night. A tree, if we can find one. Get up off the jungle floor." He paused and made a point of looking back at her and dipping his head in Rider's direction. "You think the kid'll be ok...I mean...seeing that. His mom...well, you know?"

Sarah resisted the urge to turn and look at Rider. "I don't know. But I do know for sure that he is one tough little man." Sarah felt her stomach twist. She hadn't wanted Rider to know about her past, not yet; he had figured it out on his own. She certainly had not wanted Rider to see her do what she had done in her past; he had, though. He'd even been a part of it. She swallowed her worry and turned around, walking back to Rider, who'd finished eating.

"Ok, we are going to have to move on, Rider. We can't stay here. We'll leave that man food and water, but we are going to leave him behind. We can't trust him to come with us. The jungle is barely passable as it is. The other man...is dead." She saw Rider swallow hard, but then she saw his face shift. It became determined, ready, otherwise unreadable. It was the face he had on the day his hockey team won the championship and he turned a hat trick and was named MVP. He could go on; he could cope. _He is_ my _son too._

ooOoo

Chuck popped back into consciousness, back in his own body. Pop! Suddenly, there was he was. Nearby, wheelwright was working, moving between open laptops on the table. One, the one not being used, had lots of images on it, all images, Chuck realized with an inner tremble, of spiders. The other Chuck couldn't make out since Wheelwright was standing in front of it. The room was growing dark; the night was coming.

Chuck's thoughts turned to Sarah. He had a sudden on-rush of guilt again, about his secret. About the earliest download. He recalled a conversation with Ellie when he was trying to explain to her why he wanted to keep it secret.

" _But, look, Ellie, if it's just in there but isn't causing any harm, and if it would be dangerous to take it out…" He gestured at her, pausing, struggling to know what to say, how to say it._

 _Ellie jumped into his pause. "But Chuck, that's an argument for leaving it alone, and I agree with you about that. But that's not an argument for keeping it from your wife. The Intersect has harmed you both. Thank God Morgan's kiss idea worked (and who knows how that happened, I sometimes think he's a pint-sized Merlin), but if it hadn't, the Intersect might have cost you Sarah. You have to tell her." Ellie gave him a look like the argument was now over._

 _Chuck stood there. He looked away from Ellie for a moment, and then back to her. "El, look, I know I am asking you, Beckman, too, to be an accessory to a secret. But you don't really get it. Ever since she dropped into my life, I've tried to understand what she's doing in it, not in the secret agent sense, but in the...personal sense. What is she doing with me? And ever since she dropped into my life, I've had to win her again and again...and again. I told you that once, though maybe then you didn't fully understand it. But you do now. And I'm not complaining about having to win her over and over; she's always worth it; she's worth anything…"_

" _Anything but the truth, Chuck?" Ellie's eyes were bright and hard._

" _No, no, that's not what I mean. Now that I know I have always had the Intersect, or nearly always, I just worry that I won't be able to...keep her, keep winning her, if I give it up."_

" _Right, Chuck. But no one is asking you to give it up. I believe you should keep it, just not keep it a secret."_

 _Chuck fell back on empty gesticulations again. He reddened and he stared at the ground. "El, I don't ever want her to wonder if...if…"_

 _Ellie's eyes softened, her posture too. 'Just say it, little brother."_

" _I never want her to wonder if she really loves the Intersect...and not me. I worry about that enough for both of us. Heck, I worry about it enough for a football stadium full of people."_

" _But Chuck, listen, please. That's crazy talk. I don't mean to be...mean. But it is. That woman has been in love with you since the beginning.."_

" _Yeah, Intersected-me. You saw how she was when she lost her memories, when she became the Sarah, the agent, she was before she knew Intersected-me. She had no feelings for me. She told me so. 'I don't feel it'...That's what she said. When she knew me without the Intersect, she was prepared to kill me."_

" _Chuck, listen to yourself. Now you sound like the one with amnesia." Anger flashed in Ellie's eyes. "Yes, Sarah left. For a little while. Then she came back. Then she took you with her when she went after Quinn…"_

" _But I had to beg, basically."_

" _How does that change anything? If she had not felt something for you, the begging wouldn't have worked._ Agent Walker _, remember? I know what Sarah said, Chuck, but pay attention to what she did. Where did you find her, kiss her?"_

 _Chuck sighed. "On our beach."_

 _Ellie grinned a little. "And did you have to force her to kiss you? Or beg her?"_

 _Chuck had told Ellie this story. He knew she wanted him to hear his own answers. "No. She asked me to kiss her, even kinda told me to."_

" _And did it feel like she was kissing you experimentally, Chuck, just to see if she could get her memories back as a result?"_

 _Chuck looked a little surprised by the question. It took him a second to answer. "...No. I know Sarah's kisses. That wasn't an...experiment. And if it was magic, it wasn't like Sleeping Beauty. She kissed me too, really kissed me, back."_

" _So what are you so afraid of? You didn't have the Intersect when she kissed you."_

" _Oh, yes, I did. I had the first one."_

" _But," Ellie huffed in exasperation, "Sarah didn't know that. She still doesn't."_

" _No, but maybe it is the reason she kissed me back on the beach, even though she didn't know it, and maybe it's the reason she's stayed, even though she doesn't know it…"_

" _You know, Chuck, if Sarah didn't love it so much, I'd pull your hair out. Better yours than mine, anyway, because that's what you make me want to do." She reached up and smacked him on the top of his head. "Sarah wants children with you. Do you really think Sarah wants to have the Intersect's child? Give birth to circuits and wires? A computerized_ Rosemary's Baby? _Do you hear yourself, little brother? You aren't making sense."_

 _Chuck just stood there. At a loss. "I can't help it. I don't want to believe it's the Intersect. But nothing scares me as much as losing her. And if I only get to keep her because of the Intersect…I just don't know how to explain it_...How... _ **she**_...how Sarah Walker, _could be in love with me, be my wife."_

" _Chuck, love is exactly what defies explanation. If you could explain it, it wouldn't be love, it'd be lust or infatuation or something else. Those are explainable, usually easily explainable. The Intersect is not the explanation of why Sarah loves you."_

" _But what if it_ is _?"_

" _So you are willing to have her stay with you, in love, not with you, but with the Intersect, even though she doesn't know it? Because then she remains your wife, even though she's really in love with the Intersect? And you'd rather think that's what's going on than risk losing her? Is that the twisty craziness in your head? Did I describe it correctly?" Chuck nodded slowly, once._

 _Ellie threw her hands in the air, but she stopped arguing. She let him keep his secret, but she was not happy about it. At all._

He was crazy. Ellie was right. Why had he talked himself in circles and twisted himself around? What he said didn't really make much sense, if it made any at all. Yes, he was afraid of losing Sarah. But she had never done anything to make him think there was any danger of that. Most days, he knew she loved him and that she would do anything for him, even die if necessary. But there was that returning, nagging doubt, the feeling that her love for him was an impossibility, that something else was really going on. That being Sarah Bartowski was Sarah Walker's deepest cover, so deep even she didn't know it was a cover...

He knew he was starting to spiral, twisting himself again. He forced himself to recollect the download from his dad's lab, what he had seen on the screen. He had seen more than just a spray of images. But what more?

ooOoo

Casey found a huge tree, with a thick trunk and heavy limbs, covered round in ropey vines. He cut large green fronds from some of the smaller trees and he and Sarah working together were able to get them up into the tree and to make a kind of padding in the section of the tree where the heaviest limbs parted company from the trunk. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing.

They clambered up and into their makeshift perch. It was nearly dark by the time they situated themselves. They shared some water and each ate an energy bar. Sarah found a spot where Rider could be near her, and she could wrap him and her in her mosquito netting. Casey wormed into his. As the darkness became inkier, Rider snuggled against her. Sarah felt her heart ache. She was worried about him, about what he had seen, about where he was.

As if he knew what she was thinking, Rider spoke to her in a whisper. "It's ok, Mom. Really. That...today was scary. But I am still not scared of you. It's ok, Mom. That man was going to...hurt you and Casey. I had to stop him...help you."

"I know, honey. I know. Don't dwell on it now. It's over. Let's concentrate on finding your dad."

Sarah reached out in thought to Chuck, her husband. She needed him so much, loved him so much. She loved him more now than in Burbank, more now than on their wedding day, more now even than that day on the beach when she found herself again after that world-restoring kiss.

Holding her boy and thinking of her husband, Sarah fell asleep. Casey and Rider were asleep, too.

ooOoo

Chuck was back in his body again. But also back in his cage and in the plastic bag. The room was dark, except for the weak light from a couple of naked bulbs. Chuck wondered how Wheelwright was powering them. He noticed then noticed another voice in the room, a voice he had heard before. Wheelwright was talking to...Sarah? No, not Sarah, but another tall blonde woman. He didn't recognize her voice when he heard it before, but he should have. He knew her, though it had been years since he'd seen her. _Robyn Cunnings. But wait, she's supposed to be in prison. But so is Wheelwright._ The years had hardened her, the look of her, and the fatigues she was wearing did not help.

"I tell you, you owe him to me, Wheelwright. I funded all of this. That has to be figured into my bid for him and has to make it the highest bid. You will not sell him out from under me." Chuck listened helplessly. He remembered Cunnings' taste for torture. He fervently hoped she would be outbid.

Cunnings and Wheelwright left the room, walking out into the dark. Chuck took the time to get back to his remembered images. He was close, close to something. At a certain point, though, he became exhausted trying to find a way to study each image.

He stopped attending to them individually, and without meaning to, he recollected them as a whole, instead of attending to them as distinct images. _Huh? How is that possible?_

When he remembered them as a whole, quelled the spray, the movement, he saw himself, or rather, himself as a boy. All those images were somehow images that composed a larger image of Chuck, of him when he was not much older than Rider. It was like a puzzle in which each puzzle piece was itself a complete image, and yet together they completed another image, an image of Chuck. What did that mean?

He lost the question for a moment, though, when he realized that he had moved one of his fingers. _He_ had done it. There had been no command from Wheelwright. He couldn't move anything else, but he moved that finger again. He felt as though his consciousness, drawn up into a ball of light in his interior darkness, was slowly diffusing itself back through his limbs, reclaiming his body. It wasn't happening fast, but it was happening.

And then Chuck noticed. Spiders.

They were coming in from the outside, through holes in the walls and the roof. They came in a legion. They gathered on the ground outside his cage.

They stared at him. He could hear a strange sound, but not with his ears. In his mind. Strange sounds like a dark, primitive murmur, a chant of murmurs. They were waiting.

But for what?

ooOoo

Carina and Beckman got back from scouring the village. There was no sign of Rider. No one had seen him. They were both sure he'd gone after Sarah. They could only hope it worked out. They had no vehicle that could get them in as far as the Cruiser had gotten. Beckman had requested that the team coming tomorrow bring a smaller, lighter all-terrain vehicle, but there was no guarantee one would come and no guarantee they could find Rider even if they had it. Sarah and Casey's signal was weaker yet than it had been earlier. Weak, the signal had stopped, suggesting they had stopped for the night. They were not far from the center of the vicinity that Chuck's tracker had led them to. Tomorrow would likely be the day they found Wheelwright, _fingers crossed_. But Carina and Beckman were in effect deaf and blind. And they were a man down, a boy down, rather.

Carina gritted her teeth, staring out the window toward the dark jungle. _C'mon, Rider, be ok. Find your mom. Bring her home and your dad, too._

ooOoo

Sarah woke up, cramped and achy. Itching and burning, burning up. But then she realized the burning up wasn't all her; it was coming from Rider. Mostly from Rider. She put her hand on his forehead. It was hot. She felt him tremble, a chill.

Rider had a fever. She frantically fished out a bottle of medication from her bag, and she woke him and got him to take it. But even in the weak morning light, she could tell that his response was uncomprehending and that his eyes were glassy.

This was not good, not good.

* * *

 **A/N2** Cough, cough. Ahem. Well, more to come next time in Chapter 8, "Chief of Spiders". Leave a review, please. I'd love to know how you rate the spinning of this spidery web.

More soon.

Zettel


	8. Chapter 8: Chief of Spiders

**A/N1** And so, at last, we reach our cold open, our teaser; at last, we make contact with the initial scene of our story.

Thanks for reading and reviewing. I appreciate your time. Please drop me a line. I'd love to know your thoughts on the story.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **Too Old For This**

* * *

CHAPTER EIGHT

 _Chief of Spiders_

* * *

Sarah let the damp, slickened binoculars fall to her chest, their weight pulling the strap against her sweaty, irritated neck. Mosquitoes were swarming around her, but she forced herself to ignore them, to ignore their teasing, incessant buzzing, their constant, pinprick bites. She glanced to her side, seeing the bites on Casey's face, measuring the intensity of his concentration as he peered through his binoculars and ignored the mosquitoes she could see swilling on the backs of his hands and his cheeks.

Doing for him what she would not do for herself, she waved her hand at the insects, forcing them all back into the live clouds of their kin that encircled her and Casey. As she did, she thought involuntarily of watching _The African Queen_ recently with Chuck, of that scene on the riverbank, the sudden attack of swarming insects...

Casey pulled the binoculars away from his face, blinking at her in thanks, for the thought, anyway. She could read the further thought in his eyes; she was thinking it too: _We are too old for this_. Sarah nodded a tight _you're-welcome_ , knowing that her face was as blotched with bites as Casey's. They were both exhausted.

They were also both sick with worry, worry about Chuck and now about Rider. Rider was behind them a few yards away, seated against a tree, his arms on his knees, his head hanging. The medication Sarah was giving him had helped, but not cured him: he was comprehending things now, not so glassy-eyed. But he was ill.

Sarah's hopes were pinned on the little encampment in the jungle. Her hopes for Chuck and her hopes for Rider too. She was sure Chuck was there, and likely more effective medications for her son.

 _The encampment_. They had discovered it an hour or so earlier, heard its noise. They'd worked their way closer, inch by inch, partly because of caution, partly because Rider was weak. At the center of the encampment was a ruined temple or some ancient building, a building long, long ago abandoned. Parts of it had fallen in and others were so heavily overgrown with vegetation that it was nearly impossible to see any stone or wood in the structure.

Around that central building stood tents, four of them, not huge, but large enough. Each had a vestibule of mosquito netting in which there were fold-out tables or chairs or both. There were generators running, and small barrels of fuel, presumably, near them.

There were several armed men in the encampment, four as best they could count. They had also seen Wheelwright, briefly, once, as he walked from a tent to the central building. He'd stopped and given orders to the men. The encampment seemed under stress or under subdued excitement.

But the most surprising feature of the encampment was the hole above it in the jungle canopy. She was unsure how that feat of engineering had been managed, and when she nudged Casey, pointing it out, he shrugged in response. He had no idea either. The hole was not large, but it was enough to allow the sight of the blue sky.

Casey stiffened beside her, his binoculars back up. His posture became a pointer. Sarah looked up at the hole in the canopy. The largest mosquito she had ever seen was coming through the hole, buzzing like a fighter squadron.

Or that's how it seemed. Sarah blinked, shook her head and looked again. It was a drone, a delivery drone. It was bigger than any such drone Sarah had ever seen, and she had seen many of them online one night when Chuck and Rider had thought about building one themselves. The drone had a large tank; it was evidently powered by liquid fuel. It had a small barrel hanging beneath it. It was delivering more fuel for generators.

Casey relaxed his arms, letting the binoculars tilt away from his eyes. He looked at the drone. "That's top secret shit, Sarah. High-grade, next-generation hardware. Wheelwright has powerful friends or something…"

Sarah put her binoculars back to her eyes, and before she could sweep her field of vision upward to the drone, she saw a statuesque blonde woman in fatigues leave the central building. Sarah gasped. _Robyn Cunnings_. _What the hell was she doing here?_ She heard Casey whisper the name. Cunnings was supposed to be in prison. But it seemed like no one stayed there these days. Cunnings had been a beautiful woman. As Sarah observed her, she judged that she still was. But the inner ugliness, the _twist_ in her, was showing more now, in the deepening lines on her face, around the cruel set of her eyes and in the corners of her frown.

Sarah had expected to face a madman. That was bad enough. But Cunnings wasn't a madwoman. She was just a true, evil _bitch_. She made the madman Wheelwright suddenly far more dangerous and, clearly, far better connected. The question was: _Who was Cunnings working for? Herself? Or someone else?_ Just when Sarah least needed it, things had gotten more complicated. She looked over her shoulder at Rider. He was in the same seated posture, looking small and sick, his skin greenish in the midst of all the green.

ooOoo

Beckman walked out into the heat, humidity, and bugs. Bad as it was outside, she needed to clear her head. She'd been inside forever, it seemed. She'd finally been able to reach Roan. He was fine, joking about himself, concerned for Chuck and Sarah and Rider.

He was recovering from his final round of chemo, and, although he was still enfeebled by the procedure, he was rapidly returning to himself. The cancer was in remission. Beckman was deeply torn between wanting to be here, on the edge of the jungle, and wanting to be home with Roan. He could see about himself, she knew, but she hated being away from him.

But Chuck and Sarah and Rider were, in a real sense, also her family. The only one she had. She had grown to love and respect Chuck and Sarah years ago, and she had fallen for Rider the first time Sarah put the tiny boy in her arms, not long after Sarah brought him home.

She wanted to spend more time with Roan, and he felt about Chuck and Sarah and Rider as she did. She had never admitted it to anyone, but she and Roan owned the safe house in Montana, and her plan had long been for it to be a second home. Until then, it was there for the Bartowskis. Beckman just needed to get herself to unpin the stars and the bars, and hang up the uniform. It was hard to do, though. It had been her life. But she knew it was time. She didn't know how much time she had left, but she wanted to spend as much of it as she could with the people who counted most, who mattered in her private world. She'd served the public one long enough.

She needed Rider to be ok, Chuck and Sarah, too. And of course, Casey, although Casey still seemed to her to be indestructible, more granite than man. She laughed to herself at that. If Casey was granite, it was on the outside. After all, he was out there with Sarah, hunting Chuck, putting himself in danger for people he loved, even if he couldn't admit it to them.

Beckman gazed up at the sky, sighing as the blue of it washed over her, taking some of her tension with it. The tech team was supposed to have a report for her in a few minutes. She hoped the team had figured out some way to re-establish contact with Sarah and Casey. She needed to know where everyone was, where Rider was, and she needed to know they were all ok.

ooOoo

The legion of spiders had dispersed as day broke. Chuck had been awake all night, returning their stares and slowly reinhabiting his own body. It had been the strangest of nights-all those spider eyes on him, the chants of murmurs in his head, the cold-sap slow return of volitional control of his body. The spiders were gone when Wheelwright came in, eating some sort of fruit, juice from it running down his hands and onto his arms. He slurpily announced that he was expecting big things from Chuck soon. Luckily, he hadn't really paid much attention to Chuck. Wheelwright licked his fingers and then started typing on his computer. Chuck hadn't noticed it before, but Wheelwright seemed strangely impervious to the heat and humidity. He did not appear to be sweating or uncomfortable. The guy _was_ spooky.

Chuck was imprisoned in puzzles. Why did the early Intersect bear Chuck's face? What did the spiders want? Were they really...communicating...with him? Why didn't Wheelwright sweat? (Admittedly, Chuck found that the last puzzle was less pressing than the others.)

Chuck was on his cot, pretending to be asleep. Wheelwright left. Chuck started to test himself, to find out how much control of himself he had gotten back, when Robyn Cunnings came in. She looked behind herself, clearly making sure that she had come in undetected. Then she turned to Chuck and looked at him with undisguised lust. But Chuck could tell quickly that the lust wasn't for him _per se_ ; it wasn't physical or sexual, or not dominantly so. It was dominantly lust for _the power_ he could see she took him to represent or to be.

She walked to his cage and opened the plastic, pulling it back from the door, and then she unlocked the wooden bars, the chain that Wheelwright had around the door and the nearest non-door bars. She ducked down and made her way to Chuck, bent over. Her green fatigue shirt was sweaty-unlike Wheelwright, she responded to jungle humidity and heat. Chuck continued to pretend. She bent down over his face, her face merely an inch or two above his own.

"So we meet again, Bartowski, and this time that CIA skank you married isn't here to save you. You will be mine, all mine. Wheelwright has nearly served his purpose. As soon as you are good to go, we will go, you and I. Most men beg me to use them, and I will _use_ you, Spider-Man. I'll make you _tingle_ all over. And you'll make me a force to be reckoned with. You see, I have money, loads and loads of it. I secreted it away before my unfortunate detention." She exhaled, inhaled, her breathing more shallow and quicker. Panting.

She pressed her breasts into his arm, his shoulder, rubbed herself against him. "It's been a long time since I've been free: you know, _life, liberty...and the pursuit of… happiness?"_ She leaned in all the way and her tongue slipped out. She licked his lips wetly, sighing to herself.

Her hands were gripping the cot; she moaned low in her chest; he felt her tremble against him. Her eyes closed. Squeezed shut. He did not want to know what she was imagining. When she opened them, she saw that he was awake. "Good," she observed, her eyes running along the length of him. "I'm going to enjoy you. But you won't enjoy me. I will hurt you, Bartowski, it will hurt, _I promise_. It has been a long time since I was able to hurt someone...in the way...I _like_." She smiled at him, greedy and hungry, obviously relishing some fantasy. She licked his lips again. Then she lifted herself above him a bit. She adjusted her shirt and her pants, watching him look at her as she did. She was flushed; her hands were shaky.

"You're tasty." She licked her own lips. "Maybe I get what Walker saw in you after all. But Wheelwright is making you so much more. You're a computer guy, right? Well, now you really get to be the webmaster!" She laughed. Like Wheelwright, she seemed to crack herself up. But somehow jokes, even bad ones, coming from her seemed more ominous, for all that she was attractive and Wheelwright looked like Freddy Krueger. Maybe it was partly the taste of her so strong on his lips. The feel of her against him still fresh.

She left the cage, locking the chain behind her and closing the plastic. She was facing away from him, outside. She smoothed her hands over her hips slowly, throwing him a glance after she did so. The remaining taste of her on his lips made Chuck's bile rise. He knew he had to do something. Do it soon. Soon.

When she left the room, he tried his hands. He could move them, make fists. They tingled. But as he did move them, he heard the murmurs against, low but intensifying. And then there were spiders around him on the floor again, coming in through holes in the walls. Not as many as the night before, not nearly, but there they were (maybe the daylight decreased the number?) They were watching him. Again. Murmurs again. At least it seemed like they were the source of the murmuring.

The Intersect screen from years ago re-appeared before his mind's eye, and he contemplated it, trying to scry it for answers. After a moment, he saw his face a second time in the composite of images.

It was like those puzzles in the Sunday comics when he was a boy. A picture that did not seem to contain the image, but was revealed to do so only when you looked at it the right way, looked at it divergently, looking 'past' the images. _Magic Eye_ Pictures. Autostereograms. The 3D image somehow nestled almost invisibly among the 2D images.

He turned his head and peered over at the table with the laptops resting on it. He saw a stack of files there, each full of pages. Wheelwright said he had Chuck's dad's files. Orion's files. Maybe that was them, or maybe his dad's files were among them. Chuck wanted those files. Suddenly, several of the spiders moved. They climbed the table and they crowded together around the files. They seemed to want them too. The murmuring in his head increased in volume. But then he thought of Cunnings again, of her licking him, and his concentration broke. The murmurs quieted, ceased. The spiders wandered away.

ooOoo

Sarah crawled as silently as she could back to Rider. It was hard in the damp heat to be sure, but although he still felt feverish, he was not as hot as before. The meds were at least regulating his fever. He looked up at her, his eyes blue with misery.

"Sorry, Mom. I made all this worse. If anything happens to you or Dad or Casey because of me…"

Sarah pulled him to her and hugged him. "Don't take all this on yourself, sweetheart. It's all ok. We'll all be ok." _Please, please, let us all be ok._ "Do you need more water?" He nodded, and she was grateful that she'd been able to redirect his thoughts. "Casey and I have formulated a plan, but we need to wait for it to get dark. That means a long, miserable day of sitting in the jungle."

Rider looked up at her. "I can make it, Mom, I promise. I'll be quiet." _My brave little man._ She kissed the top of his head. "Ok. Keep the water. I'm going to go back to Casey and we are going to finalize the plan." Rider gave her a weak smile and she gave him the strongest one she could muster in return. She waved vainly at the mosquitoes around the boy.

ooOoo

Chuck was still trying to shake off the visit from Cunnings when Wheelwright entered. He took a look at Chuck and grinned. "Glad to see you awake, Chuck. Today is our big day." Without further ceremony, Wheelwright went to a canister of gas and began cranking it open. Chuck heard a hiss and soon he could detect a faint scent and see wisps of gray. He hadn't noticed it before, although he now realized that he had been smelling it at least faintly for a long time. Revoltium.

Wheelwright left, making a _Be-right-back_ gesture with his hand. He came back in with a small cage in his arms, two large spiders inside it. He sat the cage on the ground near Chuck's plastic-encircled cage. He had placed the cage atop a plastic bag. He pulled the bag up and sealed it, then attached a tube to an opening in the bag, and sealed the connection with some kind of heavy tape. Then he attached the hose to a much smaller canister and turned the gas on. Chuck watched as the spiders were slowly enveloped in a grayish haze too.

Chuck felt his eyes growing heavy. He sank into the cot. He began to dream. He dreamt that he was wrapped tightly in a web, cocooned, and that a huge spider with Robyn Cunning's face was slathering him and cocooned in white spit, preparing to consume him. From somewhere, he could hear murmurs that sounded like "...The purssssuit...of happppinesssss…"

ooOoo

When Chuck woke, he was seated next to Wheelwright. He was also staring at a computer screen, one covered in crawling images of spiders. A second computer screen, with what looked like the early Intersect Chuck downloaded, was also open. Chuck felt a strange sensation, then looked down and saw a spider in his lap. It was just there. It was alive but unmoving. It almost seemed serene, like a dog in its owner's lap. _A serene spider? What am I thinking?_ Chuck was careful not to move, but his flesh was crawling even if the spider wasn't.

"Now, Chuck, I need you to concentrate. Tell your hairy friend there to move to the floor. Don't speak, of course, tell the spider to do it by willing it." Chuck had to play along. He fixed his desire on the spider moving to the floor, and then he gave the spider a mental push. Nothing happened. At first. But then the spider lifted itself on its legs and moved. But it didn't move to the floor. A moment later, it settled back into its serene posture.

Wheelwright muttered a curse. "Ok, Chuck, try again." Chuck went through the same procedure, but this time, as he gave the spider a mental push, he moved his fingers on his hand, the one away from Wheelwright, just a little. The spider scurried down Chuck's leg and onto the floor. Wheelwright scooped it up with a little shovel and dropped it back into the small cage. Then Wheelwright began a bizarre victory dance, a dance that reminded Chuck of the small man macabre-dancing in the _Twin Peaks'_ Black Lodge. The dance was stiff and awkward (Wheelwright looked more like he was convulsing, really) but Wheelwright's stretching smile told the story.

"It's all a matter of fine-tuning now, Chuck." He kept dancing, swaying. "I control you," a quick slide step, "and you control spiders," another quick slide in the opposite direction, "hence, I control spiders. Oh, a great, great and glorious day, this one! But tonight will be...the cherry on top. Tonight you, Chuck," Wheelwright stopped dancing to stare at the spider he put in the cage, "you and your friends will drop in on the ever-so-uncharming _Ms_. Cunnings, and you will...get her out of my hair." Wheelwright chuckled as he ran his hand over his mostly bald head. He began to dance again, swaying. "Then I will begin the open bidding. And get the hell out of the jungle." Step, step, quick step, step...

ooOoo

Beckman was angry. Very angry. The tech team had bad news. Wheelwright was using a disrupter, but a new, unknown one; it destroyed the functionality of many signal devices, including radios. Evidently, Wheelwright could not power the device continuously, so it was pulsing once in a while, probably as a generator created enough power. The pulses were weak but they accumulated, or so said the tech team. It would take time and a succession of pulses for any particular signaling device to cease working, but eventually, it would. Sarah and Casey's radios weren't coming back on. They could not be contacted. Not unless they could find a way to turn off Wheelwright's device or could find a means of communication that was unaffected.

Carina trudged back in from the outside. She shook her head at Beckman, frowning. No sign of Rider. A couple of villagers, a man and his wife who had extensive experience in the jungle, had volunteered to take the small all-terrain vehicle the tech team brought and find the Land Cruiser, see if Rider was there. Carina went with them.

Her tone was heavy as she reported to Beckman. "Nothing, except that we found boy-sized footprints near the edge of the heavy jungle. Rider went in after them, General, as we thought."

Beckman shook her head. As she so often had been in relation to Chuck back in the day, she was unsure whether to be pissed at or impressed by Rider. She was both, she decided. What a man that boy could be one day. She chuckled to herself for a moment: she'd had the same thought about Chuck years ago in Burbank.

Carina didn't respond to the laugh. She was distracted. "If it's ok with you, General. I am going to go back in tomorrow, deeper. I can't leave them out there. If it were me and Simon and Bryan, Sarah would come for us."

Beckman gave Carina a look of respect. "Let's decide tomorrow, Carina. I don't want to be hunting four instead of three, you know. Get cleaned up and rest."

ooOoo

Cunnings walked to the edge of the encampment and slipped into the heavier jungle. She took her communicator from her pocket. It had been insulated against destructive pulses from Wheelwright's disrupter. The man was a genius and a fool. He should have known she would find a way to stay in contact with the outside world. She pushed a button, alerting her team, put the communicator back in her pocket. Tonight, at dark, Wheelwright would die and Chuck Bartowski would be hers, all hers. She licked her lips, wishing she was licking Chuck's. She ran her hands over her hips. She then laced her fingers together and extended her arms, palms out. Her knuckles cracked.

ooOoo

It had just gotten dark. Chuck opened his eyes. He knew the answer. It was so incredibly simple. How had he missed it, all this time? Chuck Bartowski _was_ _not_ the Intersect. The Intersect _was_ Chuck Bartowski. He smiled a silly smile at himself, then grew grim.

He silently called for the spiders.

* * *

 **A/N2** Tune in next time for Chapter 9, "Spy-dery". We are poised now for the two biggest chapters of the story. We have only four (I think) to go. Please, leave a review.

Best Wishes to David Carner. He's celebrating his one-year anniversary as a fanfic writer. Thanks, David; it's been a fun year!


	9. Chapter 9: Spy-dery

**A/N1** Back, finally, to my comic-booky, pulpy-fictional little story. Prepare yourself. Lots of scene-cuts, lots of players, lots of machinery in motion. Fast and furious, yes, but, blissfully, Vin Diesel-free. You may want to take a deep breath before you plunge into this one. It's a long short chapter. Details matter. Think of it as a bit of a graphic novel, _sans_ the graphics.

Two more chapters to go, or maybe three to go, depending on how I divide the remaining story.

Thanks for the reviews and for the PMs.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **Too Old For This**

* * *

CHAPTER NINE

 _Spy-dery_

* * *

Sarah was using the one small pair of night vision binoculars they had, spying on the encampment through them. Darkness had gathered but hadn't thickened yet. The tenor of daytime insect hiss, though, had given way a baritone of nighttime hum.

Casey had finished creating a spot in the vegetation where Rider could stay, and stay reasonably safely, until they had gotten into and out of the camp. Their hope was to sneak in, steal Chuck and any first-aid supplies they could find, and then to get away. Hoping to move through the jungle at night with a sick boy and his who-knew-what-condition father was probably vain, but they would move too slowly to wait for daylight. To wait would be to be captured.

And a firefight was a crazy idea. Rider was in the bushes. They were not completely sure where Chuck was, but they hoped he was in the central building, the stone structure. _If he is here. Please let him be here and be ok!_

The plan was simple; it had to be. Casey would work his way to the other side of the encampment and draw attention. Once he had done so, Sarah would ghost into the camp and find Chuck and medicine, if possible.

Rider was not deathly ill, but he was sick enough for Sarah to be afraid for him. And he would likely grow sicker each hour. If she could find some medication, her hope was that it would relieve his symptoms and make him capable of the nighttime march they were facing.

Sarah had a tranq gun and her knives. That was all she was taking in. She needed Casey to create a ruckus if she was going to have a chance. But Casey was just the man for the job, she knew. She could get the job done too. They were getting too old for this, but they weren't that old by any means.

Sarah peered through the binoculars again, the night vision making the camp appear an unearthly green-on-green. No one was moving that she could see, except for one man doing a desultory job of standing guard. He was more absorbed by his cigarette than anything else. The humidity had evidently affected it and he had to keep re-lighting it; it would not burn on its own. That made him easy to locate, but hard to observe with the binoculars, because the flame of his lighter flashed brightly as the sun in Sarah's eyes.

"All right, Bartowski, it's about time." Casey's gruff whisper sounded almost like a shout and Sarah winced, even though she knew only she could hear him. She nodded. There was a pause as each gathered himself or herself for what was about to begin, and in the pause, there was a noise, a light-but-noticeable rustling in the vegetation around them.

Sarah put the binoculars down only to notice a shadowy shape crawling by her on the ground. A spider! Then she saw another, and another; they were all around her. She did not move, the memory of them in her hair gripping her. But the crawling arachnid stream parted around her, she finally realized, and around Casey and Rider.

But the spiders were on the move. Sarah has a sudden, icy intuition, even in the heated jungle, _Chuck!,_ and she shuddered, pushing the thought from her mind. And then, in a few seconds, the spiders' trooping around them ended. But she could still see the spiders on the move, spreading out across the ground and headed to the encampment.

Casey turned to her, his eyes big, shining, even in the dark. "Shit, Walker, are those the things that came creeping for you in Montana?" Sarah nodded in response to Casey's incredulous whisper. "Shit. Can anyone _herd_ spiders? That was a crawling stampede! Shit."

Sarah's thought again shifted to Chuck. _Chuck_. She knew her husband. When the weirdness started, in the Buymore, in Montana, in...wherever...it almost always led to Chuck. He was a weirdness magnet, the eye of the weirdness hurricane. _Spider magnet? Spider eye?_

Sarah shook the thought from her head. It wasn't possible. "We need to start now, Casey, those things will be in camp soon." Casey nodded and vanished at almost the same time. Sarah checked Rider again. He had heard the plan and then fallen into a feverish sleep. Sarah made sure there were no spiders near him. She kissed his damp forehead and whispered. "Rider, I will get you out of this. I will come back for you. No matter what. I love you." She moved to overtake the spiders. She needed to get to camp before they did. She needed Casey to hurry.

ooOoo

Chuck knew they were coming. Coming in force. But it would take time for them to assemble and to cross the distance.

Wheelwright came slinking in, crouched over, sneaking. A jungle Smeagol. "Chuuu-uuck! Chuuu-uuck! Time to end the lovely Ms. Cunnings." A whispery sing-song. Chuck stayed still. Wheelwright opened the plastic and then undid the lock on the cage, opened the door. Chuck hurtled himself at Wheelwright.

At the motion, Wheelwright gasped. "That's not possible!" Chuck stood and swung an upper-cut at Wheelwright simultaneously. The punch connected just as Wheelwright finished 'possible'. Wheelwright's head snapped back. He took a couple of steps backward and then slumped to the ground.

Chuck knelt by Wheelwright's unconscious form. He wanted to speak, to apologize, but although he could focus his actions, he found himself unable to speak. His mind was full of chanting murmurs, spider hum.

He found what he hoped in one of Wheelwright's safari jacket pockets. A small flashlight. Chuck clicked it on and then rummaged in the stack of files beside the two laptops. He found three labeled 'Orion' and he pushed them inside his shirt, partly down the back of his pants, since he had no other way to carry them and needed his hands free.

The murmurs in his head multiplied. The spiders were near and getting still nearer. He felt strange, the feeling itself intensifying as the murmurs multiplied. His skin was crawling. He felt like he had more than two eyes. A lot more. So many more eyes to see with. So much more, so much new, to see...

ooOoo

Casey muttered internally about spiders as he made his way silently around the encampment. Only the Bartowskis! Afghani warlords, corrupt Russian oligarchs-those were the villains Casey expected, the sort he expected, welcomed even. Not this, not this Halloween madness, not spiders on the fucking march.

He needed to get the Bartowskis home and then he needed to spend a few weeks somewhere without insects, like one of the Poles. North or South: he really didn't care. Green for white; that'd be a good trade. But even as he grumbled, a part of him felt lucky, lucky to be part of the crazy family that had caused him to be in the jungle, surrounded by bad guys and spiders. It really was getting to be time to think about retirement, though.

He set one explosive and then another. They explosions wouldn't be big (not as big as Casey liked, anyway), but at night, in the jungle, they'd be big enough.

ooOoo

Sarah was waiting anxiously. The glowing hands of her watch told her it would be soon. She had her tranq gun in one hand, a throwing knife in the other. She'd go on the first explosion. She needed to get her family out of this wretched jungle. Then she needed to talk to her husband.

ooOoo

Cunnings looked at her watch. The modified Blackhawk, modified for stealth, would be overhead soon. Everyone would hear it then, but it would be too late. Her men would be down, on the ground in seconds once they were above the opening in the jungle canopy. She'd paid for the best. If all went according to plan, they'd be gone with Chuck in a few minutes more. She'd leave Wheelwright corpse, and the corpses of his men, to rot in the damn jungle. When she got Chuck to her base, then she could... _play_ with him.

ooOoo

Rider woke up panicked. Then he realized where he was. He was supposed to wait. Wait. He stood up unsteadily. No one was around. He felt light-headed and nauseated. He stood for a minute, getting his balance and his bearings. Dad. Mom. _Dad! Mom!_ He started moving, weaving really, toward the encampment.

ooOoo

Chuck stepped out of the stone building he'd been caged in. Nothing was stirring. Well, nothing except for the spiders. He knew, he just knew in his gut, that they were on the edge of the camp. He was marching with them, he was among them and he was their destination all at once.

Then, a stirring. He heard a noise and he crouched down. He saw Cunnings. She was headed straight toward him but she had not seen him. He worked his way around the building. If it worked, he could circle the building and then come up behind her. He was about halfway around the building when he heard the sound, like a giant beater, moving and compressing air. He looked up, and in the darkness, he thought he could see an opening, and in it, a helicopter. Men were jumping from it, coming down ropes that dangled from beneath it. Damn, damn.

And then there was an explosion. Small arms fire. Above him, he heard another sound. _A second helicopter?_ The sky was suddenly ablaze with fire, tracers. The first helicopter's guns were firing. A second explosion. He stood up and started running around the building. Cunnings was near the door of the building but she was now looking up into the sky. Chuck tackled her to the ground. He hit her with so much speed that they rolled over several times before they came to a stop. She was on her feet again immediately, her gun in her hand.

"I should have known not to underestimate you, Chuck, and not to overestimate Wheelwright. Now," she waved the gun toward the edge of the camp, "you come with me. We'll be out of here soon." Chuck stood, dusting himself off. Murmurs stuffed his head. The edge of the camp was fine with him. The spiders were there, waiting.

Cunnings realized that something unexpected was going on above her. As they moved quickly out toward the edge of camp, she glanced up and frowned. "A new team in the mix…?" Chuck felt and heard boots hit the jungle floor and then he and then gunfire started on the ground. Evidently, Wheelwright's men were firing on Cunnings' men.

ooOoo

Rider heard the gunfire. In his feverish state, everything seemed to blend together. He started to run toward the central building. He had to save his dad, his mom. Ignoring everything else, he steered by the building, aiming for it. Somehow, he made it into the camp and to the door of the building. He ran inside.

ooOoo

Sarah thought she heard something behind her, but she couldn't stop to look. She saw Cunnings leading Chuck toward the edge of the camp. She had to get to him. He was up and walking at least, but his gait seemed odd, angular. She veered away from the central building. Above and around her, men were coming into camp, down the ropes from the helicopter. Two were between her and Chuck. She fired her tranq gun, hitting first one man and then another. The nearest threats dealt with, she lengthened her stride.

 _She had to get to Chuck._

ooOoo

Inside the central building, Rider saw an empty cage and an older man on the ground. Two laptops were open on the table. One had pictures of spiders on the screen. The other looked...different. Intriguing. Drawn to it, Rider stopped and looked at the screen. Without thinking, he reached out and hit enter. There was a spray of images. He thought he saw his dad's face on the screen. He heard the old man on the ground shout, "No!" and then Rider gaped as the images entered his mind, pulling him toward them, filling his consciousness, amalgamating him to them, themselves to him.

ooOoo

Above the camp, the guns of the two helicopters blazed away. The first was hit, seriously damaged. Its engine began to sputter and it abandoned the opening in the canopy, limping away. It exploded in midair. Fiery debris rained down into the jungle, but at a distance from the encampment. Another helicopter took its place, and a new group of darkly clad figures began to come to come down ropes hanging from beneath it. Cunnings stopped and stared upward She never saw the spiders coming, pooling hairily at her feet. Chuck stopped and looked at her, gazed at Cunnings, with a his new octonocular awareness.

ooOoo

Sarah saw Cunnings staring skyward, Chuck staring strangely at her. One of the men on the ground raised his rifle, pointing it at Chuck. Sarah fired the tranq gun. Or, she pulled the trigger. Misfire. She threw her knife with her left hand. Her aim was not quite true, but it was true enough. The knife lodged in the man's thigh and his shot went wide of its mark. Sarah saw another man aiming at Chuck. She was close enough to go airborne. She hit Chuck in the side and they both crashed to the ground as the man's rifle fired.

Sarah landed and rolled to her feet. She heard a scream, pure terror, unearthly. Involuntarily, she wheeled around. Cunnings was blighted by spiders.

Sarah froze for a second, unable to process the sight. Cunnings was trying to bat spiders out of her hair with hands and arms. But her hands and arms were covered in spiders too.

Another shot against the backdrop of small arms fire in the camp. _Chuck! No!_

ooOoo

Chuck could feel the spiders; he was the spiders. They, they all were altered. _Revoltium_. It had maddened them, alienating them from their instincts, torturing them in a way they could not understand but could only suffer. The alterations had made their minds somehow available to his altered, Intersected mind, the Revoltium a conduit from their consciousness to his own and vice versa.

They had spotted Cunnings and they acted on Chuck's involuntary fear and revulsion. They were on her in seconds. They were going to kill her. But Chuck countermanded their desire; they attacked her, covered her, but only a few bit her. He controlled the others. But he saw her, he saw everything now, through the spiders' eyes. _Everything times eight_ : the world a vast octaplex.

Suddenly he was on the ground. Another blonde. Another human woman. Shots. Cunnings slumped beneath her payload of spiders. And then Chuck felt the spiders turn their collective attention to the central building. They were now acting on their desires, not his, but his memory was available to them. Their tormenter, his tormenter, was there. Wheelwright. They would kill him. _Wheelwright_. The name one concerted murmur. They scurried toward their prey. Chuck tried to stop them but they would not respond. And then the connection, the conduit, between him and them...snapped.

ooOoo

Sarah turned just as the man fell, and just in time to see Casey as he lowered his gun. He was running toward her, but staring at Cunnings still covered in spiders on the ground. The spiders began to disperse, moving as a reformed unit toward the central building.

"Get Chuck, Sarah! Rider's in that building. He ran into camp behind you!"

Sarah froze again, stuck for an eternal second between her son and her husband. But she trusted Casey; he was closer to the building, closer to Rider. She ran to Chuck.

He was on the ground, staring up as if he were watching the new arrivals from the new helicopter. But his eyes were unfocused, as if his true object of vision were something else, someone else, somewhere else.

"Chuck, Chuck, honey, it's me, it's Sarah!" His face went slack and his eyes closed. He lost consciousness. "Chuck!"

Then Sarah heard a voice from behind her, a...familiar voice. "Sarah? Sarah, is that you? Is that...Chuck?"

Sarah turned. She was surrounded by weapons.

ooOoo

Casey burst into the central building. He was too late for Wheelwright. Wheelwright was smothered in spiders, screaming. Rider was untouched. But he was standing stock-still, fixated on a computer screen.

"C'mon, kid, I know the apple falls near the tree, but no time for video games."

Rider turned to Casey. He was sweaty. He looked absorbed, entranced. And then he returned to himself. "Casey?...Where's dad? Where's mom?"

Casey didn't answer. He grabbed Rider, picked him up and put him over his shoulder. Then, Casey stopped. A thought crossed his mind. He slammed the laptop shut and took it with him.

When he got outside, he found armed men surrounding Sarah. She was kneeling beside Chuck, who was evidently unconscious. One of the group stepped forward, doffed his cap, spoke. Casey looked at him, no, _her_ , again, missing the words. Her long hair fell dark from beneath the cap, her face lit up by flames from nearby debris.

Casey gasped. Then he growled: "Chuck me...Another goddamned Bartowski." He stooped and let Rider off his shoulder, steadying the boy with his free hand. Rider peered at the woman's flame-lit face, marveling.

"Grandma Frost?"

* * *

 **A/N2** Poor Casey. It's raining Bartowskis. And, uh-oh, _Rider_. Tune in next time for Chapter 10, "Family Curse". Free bug spray for anyone who leaves a review. Not really: but I will respond.


	10. Chapter 10: Family Curse

**A/N1** Back at it, such as it is. Such as I am.

A difficult couple of weeks. My dad died. The funeral was Monday. I wrote to keep myself occupied during downtimes, but I wrote in an altered state, I admit. Not sure this gets done what I wanted. Odd chapter (title, etc.) for me to be writing just now.

Thanks for reading, reviewing and PM-ing me. I appreciate it!

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **Too Old For This**

* * *

CHAPTER TEN

 _Family Curse_

* * *

"Rider?"

Frost ran to her grandson and took him in her arms. He collapsed as she did so. Holding him tightly to her, she turned, sweeping his legs up with her other arm, and carried him. Casey took the moment and put the laptop in his hand into his backpack, checking to see if anyone had noticed. No one had. All eyes were on Frost and her grandson.

She carried him to Sarah, who was still kneeling by Chuck, though she was turned toward Frost and Rider, her eyes dark with worry. Frost gently put the boy on the ground beside his father. She put a hand on his forehead. Sarah had taken Chuck's hand and was rubbing it, all the while watching Frost and Rider anxiously.

"Rider's burning up, Sarah."

Sarah nodded. "He's been sick for more than a day now, I think. We need to see if there are meds in camp."

Frost looked up at the men around them. "Well, you heard her! Find me some meds. There must be some here. No one would come to stay in this damned damp inferno for any time without meds!"

A sudden explosion served as the exclamation point on Frost's words.

The explosion came from inside the central building. And, although it was violent, knocking those who were not already on the ground to the ground, the stones of the building contained much of the explosion.

A flash, a wave of palpable sound. Then nothing. Dust settled.

A moment of quiet, eerie quiet, no bugs, nothing: and then the jungle began to resume its night sounds. The flaming debris had mostly burned itself out or been smothered finally in the wet vegetation.

Frost was up, on her feet, first, growling. "Dammit. Wheelwright."

Sarah had thrown her body across Chuck and Rider. She got up second.

"Don't see how," Casey said, getting up third, and putting his backpack on. "When I saw him last, the spiders had made him their bitch, their Miss Muffet. They were having their whey with him. Curdled my stomach." Casey shuddered but the hint of a smile lifted the corners of his mouth. Muttering something about no one ever thinking he was funny, he started toward the smoking building. A couple of other men joined him, and Frost sent the others to search the tents for meds.

Frost reached for the radio hanging from her hip and tried to call the helicopter. Her eyebrows went up a fraction when she got an answer. "Explosion must've damaged Wheelwright's disrupter…Old Volkoff tech."

She explained the situation. The helicopter pilot told her he would only be able to maintain position for a while longer, then he would have to return to refuel. One of the men returned from a tent with a first-aid kit. Sarah quickly took it and found the pills she'd been hoping to find. She had moved over to Rider and she bent down and roused him enough to get him to take the pills and swallow some water, slowly, heavily. But then he slipped back into unconsciousness. Frost was checking Chuck, aided by one of the men.

"His vitals are stable, Sarah. What's wrong with him?"

Sarah shot Frost a glance full of confusion. "Don't know, but Wheelwright found some way to tap into Chuck's Intersect. And he has…Revoltium."

Now it was Frost's glance that was confused. "Chuck's… _Intersect?_ " Sarah nodded, looking carefully at Frost's face. Frost seemed genuinely surprised. "Does his sister know?" Another nod from Sarah. "And…Beckman?" Another nod. "Damn it. When do the secrets end in this family?"

Sarah's gaze hardened. Frost had returned to the CIA. Neither her son nor her daughter, no one knew where she was most of the time, as had been true since before Chuck vanished. She was here when they needed her, but it seemed to have been an accidental rescue. Before Sarah could censor herself, she blurted it out: "It's a family of _spies_. Some of _you_ are still spies. Intersects. Secret basement spy bases. How can the secrets ever end?"

A pall of pain slid across Frost's face. She started to speak. Stopped.

Her radio crackled. The helicopter would be in position in a minute. They would lower a basket. It was large enough for both Chuck and Rider to fit in it.

Frost got some of the men to help and they carried Chuck and Rider into position. When the basket was lowered, they were just able to put father and son into it. Sarah stood beside it as it went up. Her whole world was in that basket.

Frost took Sarah's hand. "They'll be ok. We owe each other a story…".

Before either woman could begin, Casey came walking up, coughing, shaking his head. "The lab's gone. Everything's slagged. BBQ'd spider everywhere. But no Revoltium. It all went up in the explosion. Canisters are blown apart." Casey stopped but did not seem like he had finished. Sarah gave him a look. "Wheelwright's body ain't in there." Casey's voice grew slightly incredulous. "Like I said, when I saw him last, he was, um, all _spidery_. Now, no trace of him. I don't know how he could have lived…"

Frost's radio crackled again. Lines were lowered for the three of them. She walked away for a moment and gave orders to the men to collect anything they could find and to search nearby for Wheelwright. But she told them not to follow him into the jungle.

"If he went in there at night, in his condition, he's never coming out." Finally, she gave an order to inject Cunnings with the anti-venom in the med kit. "If she lives till the 'copter comes back, bring her. If not, leave her body to the bugs. At least she'll feed something, the sick bitch. I'm sick to death of chasing her."

Three ropes came down, two with harnesses. Frost still had hers on. They clipped in and got pulled up into the helicopter.

ooOoo

Frost contacted Beckman once they were in the air and explained the situation, although she offered no explanation for her presence. Beckman's reply was relieved and happy, but Sarah could hear a sharp note of exasperation with Frost in Beckman's voice, an exasperation both personal and professional.

They were being flown back to the village, so Beckman let the conversation end but it was clearly not over. Frost frowned to herself as the call ended. She seemed as exasperated with Beckman as Beckman was with her.

Sarah felt Rider's head. He felt cooler, she thought, although still feverish. Chuck was still unconscious, but he had no obvious injury, did not seem ill. He was just...not conscious. Frost had touched Chuck's face, staring at him, her concern evident.

"What did they do to you, son?"

She looked up at Sarah. Sarah told her in quiet tones all that had happened since Chuck had gone missing.

When Sarah finished, Frost shook her head. "So, Rider followed you to the safe house, and again into the jungle?" Frost reached over and rubbed Rider's curls. "You are some kind of kid…" Her tone was equal parts love, respect, and frustration. Sarah understood; she smiled weakly and rested her hand on Rider's chest. His breathing was deep and regular.

Sarah kept her eyes on her son and her husband, but she spoke to Frost. "So: your story?"

Frost hesitated. Sarah recognized the hesitation. She'd almost gotten past it herself, almost: that old reticence, the impulse not to share, not to tell. She'd carried secrets herself for so long, pretended for so long, denied herself and her real feelings for so long, that a gulf had opened between what she knew, what she felt, and her expression of it.

One of the things she loved most about Chuck was that what he knew, what he felt, found immediate expression. Chuck's problem wasn't sharing, it was _not-sharing_. Like his stories about the beautiful, deadly spy and the nerd who loved her that he had told Rider as bedtime stories. While he hadn't named Sarah or himself, he couldn't keep their story to himself. Chuck loved their love story. No doubt that had come through and been part of the reason Rider had realized that the stories were about his mom and dad.

Of course, Sarah loved their love story too, but she told it to no one else, except herself. But she told it to herself often; it always made her happy. It made her feel safe, safe and...at home in the world.

Frost finally quit her hesitation. "I've been chasing Robyn Cunnings…for weeks. I had to go dark to do it; the CIA did not want anyone to know she was on the loose. Major embarrassment. I got the op because they knew I had a…grudge. What she tried to do to you and Chuck, Ellie and Devon…". Frost's eyes glinted dangerously in the dark, but she took a breath. "The whole thing was a clusterfu…" Frost shot a look at Rider, "well, it was a _mess_. It turns out she had stolen millions and had managed somehow to keep the money hidden. We think she had help in high places, maybe help that was also involved in her escape. I still don't know. It made her hard to find, hard to run to ground." Frost gave her head a disgusted shake.

"I had no idea she had contacted Wheelwright until a few days ago. I knew she was after someone, something…a weapon. I took it to be Wheelwright's Revoltium, but evidently, there was something…" she glanced at Chuck, "… _someone_ else. More." She paused, thinking. "So, Chuck downloaded the Intersect _again_? Good God, why, Sarah?"

"No, Mary, he _still_ has the one he's had since he was a boy, about Rider's age…Ellie thought it would be dangerous to remove it. He convinced her not to tell anyone she hadn't removed it."

"The first one? Stephen's _prototype_? But if it was dangerous to remove it, why keep the fact that he had it a secret?" Frost was clearly stunned.

Sarah was about to go on, to explain what Beckman and Ellie had told her, when Casey, who'd been sitting quietly in the dark of the helicopter, spoke up.

"Um, Sarah, about Rider." Sarah turned to Casey. "He…well, I found him in the central building, looking at a computer. He had a look on his face I've seen before, on another face." Casey glanced pointedly at Chuck. "It was the _Intersect-look_."

Sarah and Frost gasped together. "No!" Sarah said, a harsh sigh, a cry, of disbelief. "No. John, Tell me you're joking…"

Casey wouldn't, couldn't meet her gaze; he opened the backpack at his feet, showed the laptop. "I took the computer Rider was staring at. I got it when I got him. I thought maybe it would help. I'm…sorry, Sarah."

Sarah's eyes filled with tears and then ran down her face. She remembered their earlier encounter with Cunnings years ago, and Chuck's worries then about The Bartowski Family Curse. She had told him there was no curse.

A tear fell from Sarah's chin, landing on Rider's cheek.

ooOoo

Even in the helicopter, there was silence. Casey left the computer in the bag. He was looking at his feet. Frost gazed out the window, into the darkness. Sarah wiped at her eyes.

Chuck suddenly sat up. His eyes were glassy, unfocused. He turned in Sarah's direction. "Spiders. Spiders in my head..."

Then his eyes softened, focused for a moment. He gave Sarah that grin, the one he reserved for her, goofy, lovesick, and gobstruck. All these years, and he still grinned at her like that every morning, still. That grin was her dawn. It lit her up inside. It made her feel hot-cold, happy-barfy. Like the first time she saw him in the Buy More, then again dancing on their first first-date. She had then thought it was anxiety about Chuck, and about Casey and his men. She knew better now. She had already been reacting to Chuck. Viscerally reacting, as she always had and still did. Still.

But then Chuck's grin disappeared. He spoke, spoke _at_ her, not exactly _to_ her. His voice was strained and hushed, reverent: "… _Beautiful, surpassingly beautiful…but her loveliness did not lie in her features. It lay rather, if it can be said to have had any abiding home, in a visible majesty, in an imperial grace, in a godlike stamp of softened powers, which shone on that radiant countenance like a living halo. Never before had I witnessed what beauty made sublime could be…_ "

Sarah reached across Rider and took Chuck's hand, but he slumped back into unconsciousness.

Frost boggled. "What was that, Sarah? Has the Intersect….?"

"No," Sarah replied, a shy smile slowly splitting her worry and exhaustion, backgrounding her tears. "That last was all Chuck. Well, all H. Rider Haggard, I guess. It's a passage from _She_. Chuck and Rider love that book, and he has read it to Rider repeatedly. I almost always overhear; well, I listen too, to be honest...In the passage, the…complicated woman of the title, _She_ , Ayesha, unveils herself, reveals who she really is.

"Chuck's never admitted it, but _She_ makes him think of _me_. Not that we are the same. Anyway, he's never explained it to me and I've never asked. She's tragic…cursed. Men love her and fear her." Sarah sobered and fell silent for a moment. She swallowed hard "But the spiders, that's not H. Rider Haggard." Sarah mused for a moment again. "The spiders at the camp, they were being…controlled, herded somehow. I think that was Chuck."

ooOoo

" _Dad?"_ Rider's voice.

" _Mom?"_ Rider's voice echoed in Chuck's head, calling Chuck back from the chanting, murmuring darkness. From a vision of…Ayesha? No. Not Ayesha…someone else. _Her_.

" _Mom?"_

" _Rider?"_ The voice seemed nearer.

" _Dad, Dad, is that you?"_

" _It's me, Rider. Where are you?"_

" _Here, Dad. Nowhere. With you."_

" _How? Rider, where are the spiders?"_

" _Spiders? Oh. Not here, Dad. Gone. I heard them leave…leave you alone."_

" _How's this possible, Rider? How can I be talking to you? I don't see you. I don't hear you exactly."_

" _I don't know, Dad. I was sick…I_ am _sick. Mom was taking care of me. I ran into the camp to try to help. You weren't there, but your picture was on the laptop screen…"_

"My picture _? You could see it?"_

" _Yeah, how could I miss it? Why was your picture on the laptop, Dad?"_

" _Did you see anything else? Do anything else?"_ Even in the nothing, Chuck's voice echoed urgently.

" _I pushed 'Enter'."_

Silence. Silence in the Nothing, the Nowhere.

Chuck's voice at last, shrunken. " _Oh, no, Rider. No. You didn't..."_

" _...I did. I saw lots and lots of pictures, pictures in your picture…and pictures in those pictures. Pictures all the way down. What was it, Dad?"_

It took Chuck a while to respond. " _The Intersect, buddy. It's called…The Intersect. A computer interface with the brain._ My _Dad…invented it. I saw it by mistake…downloaded it…when I was about your age. And then again, later, a new version, just before…I downloaded it just before I met your mom."_

Rider could connect dots; he was their son. " _Oh, so_ that's _how the nerd met the beautiful, deadly spy! You never did explain that, Dad."_

" _I couldn't tell you about the Intersect…Wait, wait, you knew? That the stories were about me and your mom? All this time? And, wait, do you think I couldn't have met your mom on my own?"_

" _Of course, I knew, Dad. I mean, not at first, but after a story or two, I was sure. And, no, I don't mean that you couldn't have met Mom on your own. You two would have found each other, eventually. No matter what. When you went missing, Mom told me that_ you two find each other, _that it is sort of your thing. That's what she said…That includes when you first met, or that's what I think."_

" _You think we would be together if there were no Intersect? If I didn't have it? Never had it?"_

" _Yeah, Dad. I see you Mom look at you when you don't know it. I see you look at her when she doesn't know it. I'm lucky, Dad. I know my parents love each other, really love each other."_

Rider waited but Chuck did not immediately respond. When he did, his voice was a little choked. " _Thanks, son."_

" _So do you think we can…talk...like this because of... the Intersect?"_

" _Yes, Rider, I do. The man who took me…Wheelwright…did something to the Intersect to make it possible for minds...to meet. But that also involved Revoltium. He didn't gas you did he, Rider?"_ Chuck's voice grew panicked.

" _No, Dad, I don't think so. I don't feel good, but I've been sick. Like I said. I've had a fever."_

" _Huh. Maybe...the fever is...mimicking the effects of the Revoltium, and allowing the Intersect to…link…us._

" _Rider, promise me, you will let Aunt Ellie get the Intersect out of your head. It shouldn't be in there. I think I finally understand what my dad did, was trying to do. He didn't make the Intersect for me. He made it in the image of me. I didn't get it then. Or for a long time. Really until just a little while ago._

" _When I downloaded it, Dad was terrified. He was checking me, to see if I was alright. When it seemed I was, he told me I was special. I thought he meant that I was special because I had done it, downloaded it. But that's not what he meant. He meant that he made it as he did because I was special. He wanted the Intersect to help other people to be...special too. But somewhere along the line that early vision got corrupted…"_

" _You really thought he meant you were special because you could download the Intersect, Dad? Really?"_

" _I know. I know. I can be a colossal idiot. Thank God, you take after your mother. You are special, son, and not because of the Intersect. Never forget that or get confused about it, even if I did."_

" _I won't. And I take after you too, Dad, and I am glad I do…"_

Rider's voice began to fade, but as it did, Chuck suddenly had a flash of images, scenes of Sarah looking at him when he was focused elsewhere, scenes Rider had witnessed. Rider had given him the flash, a chance to see what he couldn't see.

The light of love in her eyes…Not for the Intersect, for him.

He really was an idiot. She loved him anyway.

He needed to find his way out of the Nowhere. He needed to find a way home.

ooOoo

They'd landed and gotten Chuck and Rider into the house they were using as headquarters. Carina had pitched in to help, since Sarah was completely exhausted, emotionally and physically. Beckman oversaw the process. Frost was on the phone. The helicopter left to refuel; it could not get them all the way to Cuiaba.

Once inside, after making sure that Chuck and Rider were comfortable, Sarah sank heavily on a chair, putting her elbows on her knees and crossing her arms in front of her. Her hair, damp and leafy, hung limply around her face. Frost pulled up a chair beside her, after conferring with Carina and Beckman.

"Chuck and Rider are both ok, as far as we can tell. Rider's fever broke. I think he's out of the woods...or the jungle. We can deal with the Intersect once he's stronger. Chuck is still unconscious, but otherwise, he seems fine. I called Ellie about it. She thinks he needs time for the Revoltium to leave his system since he was almost certainly dosed, and dosed repeatedly."

Sarah looked up, her voice heavy with worry. "Does Ellie think he'll be ok? Be the _same_? After so much of that stuff?"

Frost frowned and shrugged, both reluctantly. "She didn't know. Unfortunately, we don't have any of it to analyze. We'll just have to wait and see. Ellie thinks we should let him rest here. See what happens.

"Beckman's put in a call for medical help. I'm adding my resources in. Someone should be here in the morning. If nothing's changed, but Chuck and Rider are still stable, we'll head home tomorrow night."

Frost started to stand, but Sarah's hand reached out and took Frost's wrist in a gentle but firm grasp. "Why, Mary? Why are you still working for the Company? Why are you still a spy?"

Frost sat back down, leaving her wrist in Sarah's grasp. Sarah let go. Frost sighed. "You are asking for Chuck, aren't you?"

Sarah nodded. "Mary, some part of him cannot let go of my having been Agent Walker, and I know that one reason is that there's an earlier, darker shadow on his heart…" Sarah looked directly into Frost's eyes.

Frost spoke the monosyllables icily. 'Me. Frost."

Sarah nodded again. Frost looked at her own feet, as if pondering their past path. "I don't know why I went back. I love my grandchildren. I love Rider. I love Clara. I love to see them. But Rider has you two, Clara has Ellie and Devon. And Stephen is dead."

Frost stalled, choking back an emotion Sarah could feel emanating from Frost but see no trace of on Frost's face. "If Stephen were alive...maybe I wouldn't have gone back. Isn't that sad? 'Maybe'. That's the best I can manage. I abandoned my family once and I hated and still hate myself for it, but the best I can manage is that I _maybe_ wouldn't have gone back if Stephen were alive…" Frost looked at Sarah with a gaze so suddenly forlorn that Sarah involuntarily looked away. "I know that my decisions, and Stephen's decisions, complicated my children's lives. But I don't know any other way to live. I'm too old for this, for ropes and helicopters and psychotic female torturers and mad scientists and...spiders, but I get restless when I am away from it. It doesn't make me happy; it...just makes me _me_."

Sarah nodded once. "But I can't get Chuck to see that that's you, not me. He makes me _me_. The way I hope I make him _him_. You've made your choices, Mary, and I am not trying to sit in judgment on them. I admit that early on, after Chuck and I first got together, I wasn't sure I could give up the spy life, or at least give it up without regret. _But I did, I have._

"I want the life I now have, not the life I used to have. And Agent Walker is a part of me, but she isn't me, and...and what Chuck doesn't get is that _she's_ happy with the life I now have too. _She's_ not pining away for the Company…" Sarah shook her head in frustration. "Agent Walker was the first one to fall in love with Chuck. Because she did, she stepped aside so that Sarah Bartowski could come to be. And now I'll stop talking like I am two people..." Sarah dropped her elbows back onto her knees and studied the floor, her brows tightly knit.

Frost sat for a moment in contemplative silence. "You aren't me, Sarah. Chuck _knows_ that. Deep down, he does. Really deep down, maybe, but he does. Still, I am part of the problem; you are right. And my continued work for the CIA goads Chuck's anxieties where you are concerned. I'm sorry. It can't go on much longer. The Director has already started asking me for retirement dates. Like it or not, the clock is about to run out on my time as a Special Agent. I really am sorry, Sarah."

"It's ok." Sarah fell silent for a little while. "The main thing is that Chuck gets it through his Intersected head that I am not in love with the damn Intersect. I loved him before I knew for sure he had it, certainly before I really understood what it meant that he had it. The Intersect is part of our….admittedly odd...'meet cute' story, but it wasn't who or what I 'met cute'."

Sarah had straightened up and was waving her hands in the air, trying to punctuate what she was saying, talking to Chuck now as much as or more than to Frost. "I met Chuck! I love _Chuck_. I love your son. He's...special. Why can't he just accept that? I'm not Ayesha. I'm not a mythical woman under a curse. I'm just a human woman with a screwed up past who found the man for her." Sarah dropped her elbows to her knees again.

"Have you two talked about this yet?"

Sarah looked up at Frost, tears welling. "No, no. I didn't really know it was a problem 'til I found out he still had the Intersect and kept it from me. Everyone in this family's acting like a spy, except me. And I'm the one Chuck worries secretly wants to be a spy. But what I want...what I want is Chuck and Rider, and our home, and maybe to have another child with my husband, and to raise my kids with him in peace." Sarah wiped her eyes. "What if Wheelwright...hurt him...damaged him? What if we don't get to talk?"

Frost gripped Sarah in a hug, kind and warm. "You will, Sarah. It's Chuck. Never underestimate him. He finds his way back to you. It's like he leaves a trail…"

"One silken thread?"

Frost was puzzled. "Huh?"

Sarah wiped her eyes again and forced herself to smile. "Never mind."

ooOoo

In the darkened jungle, gibbering and swearing, mouth foaming, moving in a crouch, swollen and mottled, Wheelwright was progressing toward the village. Excruciating footfall, excruciating footfall. He moved, shrouded in a cloud of insects. In his hand, he death-gripped a small canister of Revoltium.

 _Revenge_. He would get his revenge before he yielded to the venom inflaming his veins, turning his blood to lava, before it consumed him from the inside. Revenge: the thought of it cooled his burning torment, just a little, just...enough.

* * *

 **A/N2** Two chapters to go, the last really an epilogue. Tune in next time for Chapter 11, "Repairing the Web". Thanks to David Carner for pre-reading and for a useful suggestion about the chapter. Thanks also to WvonB. Leave me a review before you consign me to the Nothing.

Unlike most of my other stories, I haven't said much about music in relation to this one. But I will here. As a backdrop to this chapter, listen to Elvis Costello's gorgeous *She*. You can find it on Youtube or Spotify.


	11. Chapter 11: Repairing the Web

**A/N1** One chapter to go after this. As I said last time, the final chapter is epilogue-ish. I appreciate folks who took the leap with this little story and have stayed around. I know it's been...odd. It's been a different sort of writer's problematic for me, and although at times I grew frustrated with it, on the whole, I am glad I followed out my impulse.

Thanks for the reviews and PMs.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **Too Old For This**

* * *

CHAPTER ELEVEN

 _Repairing the Web_

* * *

Sarah had bathed in a tub in one of the rooms of the house. Frost sat with Chuck and Rider while she was out of their room. Rider's condition was steadily improving. They expected him to wake up soon; the fever had not returned. He was sleeping off his exhaustion.

Sarah was now seated at the foot of Chuck's cot. She was looking at the files she had found when she was washing him off after her own bath. He had not stirred as she tended to him. Sarah couldn't make much of the files, except the notations, written in Stephen's small, careful hand.

He had clearly observed Chuck carefully after his boyhood download. But he had not seen anything in Chuck's condition or behavior that suggested that the Intersect was harming Chuck.

Frost was standing beside Sarah. As Sarah finished with each page, they had been in dated order, she handed the page to Frost. Sarah had been so engrossed in the pages that she had not noticed that Frost was weeping silently as she looked at them. Finally, she heard Frost mutter to herself.

"Oh, Stephen. Stephen! I left you alone with this. Maybe if I had been there...Maybe." She smiled ruefully to herself through her tears and Sarah turned away, leaving her to grief. Finally, she handed the last page over and Frost finished it. Frost dabbed at her eyes and gave Sarah a hopeful look. "If it didn't hurt Chuck, why would it hurt Rider? They are alike, so alike." Frost's voice was very quiet as she spoke. She walked to the other side of the room and slipped the folder into Casey's backpack, the one with the laptop. "We'll make sure these get to Ellie."

Sarah nodded. She got up and walked to the window, the one Rider had used to escape and follow her and Casey. She looked out at the sun as it finally crested the tree line. She turned back around after a moment; Frost was staring at her. Sarah shrugged. "I just wish Chuck would _do_ something. It's like he's here and gone. I can't stand it."

At that moment, the door opened and Beckman led a man in. "This is Dr. Guyer. He's come by helicopter. He works with the NSA from time to time. He will examine them both."

Frost left the room, but Sarah returned to her seat. She watched the doctor examine Chuck and then Rider. He was a small man, neatly dressed, with an unfortunate mustache. He seemed to know what he was doing otherwise. His hand moved quickly and surely. After a while, he stepped to her. "You are the wife and mother?"

"Yes."

"Your son looks fine to me. He's weak and tired, but the danger from the fever is gone. I believe he will awaken soon. About your husband: I don't know. He's not...ill. But he is unresponsive. You know that though." He gave her a sheepish look. "Do you know what was done to him?" She told the doctor the little she knew about the Revoltium, but she did not mention the Intersect. The doctor listened, making notes on a small pad. He looked up at her after a moment's scribbling.

"The worry really is that he will weaken. I don't know when he last ate. I will hook him up to an IV, get some fluids and nourishment into him. But I fear there's little we can do beyond that. Keep his strength up, and wait."

Sarah thanked the doctor and he went out. She heard him start the same report to Beckman and the others as she closed the door. She leaned against it when she closed it, gazing at her family. She willed herself into action and walked over, grabbed the chair, and pulled it up to the head of Chuck's cot.

She sat down and leaned close to his ear. She etched each word in a determined whisper. "You are not lost, Chuck Bartowski. I find you. I always find you. I found you. You always find me. Now, find me. You are my home and I am yours. Come home, Chuck, come back to me. I want to keep trying to get pregnant. I want to have another child with you. We aren't beat yet. We've beaten longer odds. But you have to find me now. I can't find you where you are. I can only," her voice broke, "...I can only call you to me now. Come _home_ , Chuck."

Chuck did not respond. She put her head down and his chest and she let the tears come at last, let the week of panic and worry and stress run from her eyes and onto her husband.

When Sarah looked up later, she realized Beckman had come in. Beckman did not react to Sarah's tears. She wasn't going to intrude. Sarah wiped her eyes.

"Sarah, we should be ready soon to go back to the city. A plane is there. We'll fly to LA and Ellie will be waiting for us. She's already assembling a team and the necessary equipment. Dr. Guyer thinks we can safely move them both. The other helicopter will be here soon."

Sarah smiled in thanks. Beckman left the room. Dr. Guyer returned with the needed IV and hooked it up. He watched over Chuck for a few minutes. He was about to leave when Rider spoke.

"Mom?"

Rider opened his eyes and looked around. Sarah moved quickly to him and took his hands in hers. "I'm here, Rider. You are back in the village. You are ok, you're safe, Rider."

Rider smiled at her, but weakly. "I'm hungry."

Sarah looked up at Dr. Guyer. He gave her and Rider a big smile. "Rider, I'm Dr. Guyer. Like your mom said, you are going to be ok. I'll see about food." He left the room.

Rider settled back on his cot. He gazed up into Sarah's eyes. His eyes lost focus for a moment. Sarah grew alarmed but then Rider focused on her. "Mom, I talked to Dad."

Sarah rubbed one of Rider's hands. "No, honey, that was a dream. Your Dad is...still unconscious."

Rider lifted his head and located Chuck beside him. He settled back again. "No, Mom. Not a dream. I talked to him...in my head. In his head. Dad said that it was because of my fever, and the Intersect in my head."

Sarah breathed in sharply. "You know about the Intersect?"

Rider nodded and gave her a weak version of his trademark grin. "Yeah. Dad thinks you love the Intersect."

And then Sarah knew it was true, although she had no idea how it could be. Rider's face became more serious. "I told him it wasn't true. I showed him it wasn't true…"

"Showed? What do you mean, Rider?"

"I shared memories of you with Dad. Memories of how you look at him when he doesn't see. I didn't hear him say it, but the last thing I felt was that he thought he was...an idiot."

Sarah laughed in spite of the bizarre situation. _Chuck_. "Can you still...talk to him, Rider?"

Rider concentrated his gaze. He sat still for a moment but then shook his head. "No, it doesn't work anymore. Is my fever gone? I feel better."

"Yes, Rider."

"Well, then if Dad was right, the link between us must have...broken. I thought so. But he's coming back, Mom. I know. I could feel it as the link broke." Rider was wholly serious. Sarah believed him.

"And you feel ok?"

"Yeah. Hungry, like I said, and tired. But not sick anymore."

"Good. Don't say anything about the...link, ok. Let's keep that our secret until we get to LA and to Aunt Ellie, alright?"

Rider gave her one nod then closed his eyes. He was not asleep though, just resting. Dr. Guyer came in with some food and Rider sat up and ate a little, then he went back to sleep.

Sarah left the room with the doctor. "So, he seems like he's ok, right?"

"Yes, I think he'll be fine. You need to rest some too. Let him sleep. Maybe he'll even sleep through the ride back to the airport."

Sarah felt Beckman's hands on her shoulder. "Go and stretch out for a few minutes in that room. My cot is in there," Beckman said, gently turning Sarah in the direction of the door.

Frost came in from outside at just that moment, her radio in her hand. "Cunnings lived. Not sure I feel about that. But they took her to our base on the other side of the jungle. She'll be seen to there and then transferred back to prison. This time, I will make sure the key gets thrown away for good."

Sarah looked around the room. "Where's Carina?"

"She went with a couple of the villagers to retrieve the Land Rover." Beckman looked at her watch. "They should be back any minute."

ooOoo

Carina was back. She had just arrived. She was outside the house, on the phone with Simon and Bryan. They were planning to fly to Bozeman in a few days to meet up with Carina and to see if there was any way they could help. Simon wanted to visit with Rider.

Carina talked with Simon for a few minutes, then Bryan got back on the phone.

"Carina?"

"Yes? What is it?"

"When I see you, I have a question to ask you." Bryan paused, waiting to see if Carina would react. She was silent for a moment.

"What question, Bryan?"

"I think you know, Carina. I was hoping maybe we could talk about having a…"

Carina saw a movement out of the corner of her eye. "Bryan, I'll have to call you back."

"Wait, Car-" She ended the call and put the phone in her pocket. She saw the movement again, off at the edge of the jungle, but still near the house. She thought she saw...a man? Carina had no weapon on her. She ducked down near the car and waited. After a few minutes, she saw the hunched figure of a man emerge from the jungle. He was walking, stumbling... _dancing_? His face was lopsided and swollen, purple and splotched. He was humming a tune. Then he began to sing softly.

 _You've got to accentuate the positive,  
eliminate the negative...don't mess with Mister In-Between..._

 _You've got to spread joy up to the maximum…_

 _Bing Crosby_? Carina was almost sure that was a Bing Crosby tune. She'd gotten to know it once on a stakeout, when she had nothing to do, and she'd watched a movie on tv to pass the time, _The Singing Detective._ Bing Crosby seemed wholly out of place in the jungle.

The figure kept coming. Carina could see something in its...his...hand. A canister. He was heading for the window of the house, the one to the room Chuck and Rider were in. Carina did a quick visual calculation. She could beat him there. But she needed to let him get a little closer so that he could not beat her back into the jungle if he retreated.

He was still singing, but even more quietly. Carina could see that his hands were swollen and blotched. He was covered in mud and slime. A few more steps…

Carina sprinted from her hiding place. The man was too focused on the window to notice. He was almost there. He held up the canister, twisted the top. Carina was a step away. She hit him and the canister fell to the ground, spewing gas into the air. Carina knocked it away as she tackled him to the ground. He was so weak that she had no trouble subduing him. The rolled off a distance away, still spewing its contents, but she and the man had rolled far enough away that she that the gas did not reach them.

He was thrashing weakly beneath her. Wheelwright. It had to be Wheelwright. He looked like a monster. He had evidently chewed his own lips. They were ragged and bloody. His mouth was foaming. After another twist or two, he went still. Carina thought he might be dead. She checked. She could feel a pulse, stringy and irregular, but there.

She hoisted him on her back and carried him to the house, banging on the door with her foot. Frost opened it and immediately realized what was happening. She called for Dr. Guyer and he rushed to them, Casey behind him. Casey took Wheelwright from Carina and stretched him out on the floor. Carina grabbed a cloth that was on the table and went back outside. She retrieved the now-inert canister. She took it inside and handed it, still wrapped in the towel, to Beckman.

Then she went outside. She had a phone call to finish.

ooOoo

By the time they all reached LA, Rider seemed nearly himself. His color had returned and he was teasing Carina, telling her to accentuate the positive. Carina put up with it. She knew it was partly the result of Rider's worry about his dad.

Chuck remained as he had been. Sarah was getting more and more worried. The IV kept him stable, but there was just no change. It was like Chuck's body had come back to her, but Chuck himself was still missing.

They'd been able to get nothing out of Wheelwright except old songs. Dr. Guyer had stabilized him, but he also told them that he thought Wheelwright had permanently left sanity behind. The venom and the Revoltium and the strain of that forced march through the jungle (no one was really quite sure how it was physically possible for anyone, much less a man full of spider venom) had snapped whatever guidewires had kept him in any contact with rational thought. They'd left him behind for further treatment, but Sarah was sure when she'd last seen him. He was singing _White Christmas._ Wheelwright would threaten no one again.

Ellie and her team were waiting at an LA hospital near the airport. She'd hugged Sarah and Rider and then went to work immediately on Chuck. She'd then spent several hours poring over Stephen's notes. The canister of Revoltium had traces enough in it to allow Ellie's team to get a least a quick, general idea about it. It was still being tested.

Sarah was pacing the hallways, wringing her hands. Clara had come to keep Rider company, and they were in his room, playing video games. Beckman had gone to the NSA office in the city but she would return soon. Carina had been keeping Sarah company for a while, but then she went to get them both coffee.

When Carina returned, she had two cups in her hands. She gave one to Sarah and sat down with her own. Sarah noticed that Carina's bag was full. She glanced at it and saw a couple of issues of _Fit Pregnancy and Baby_ magazine.

"So, did you find anything besides coffee downstairs?"

Carina gave her a funny look. "No, just coffee. Why, blondie? Something else you wanted?"

Sarah suppressed a smile and played dumb. "No, no, I'm ok."

ooOoo

Just as Sarah finished her coffee, Ellie came out to her. The look on Ellie's face was unreadable. She motioned for Sarah to sit. Carina got up.

"I'm going to go find Casey. I think he was in the gift shop, reading the latest issue of _Garden and Gun._ He said he was going to buy it for Gertrude." She slipped away, pulling a magazine from her bag as she did.

"Hey, Carina!" Sarah called out. Carina turned, hiding the magazine behind her back. "Don't mess with Mr. In-Between…" Carina's face turned red and she narrowed her eyes. She turned and walked away.

"What was that about?"

"Girl talk. Tell you later." Ellie nodded slowly. "So? How's my family?" Sarah tried to keep the anxiety in her voice to a minimum.

"Ok, Sarah. Here's my preliminary report. Keep in mind that this could change. First, the file you found has given me so much insight into what Dad was doing, what he was thinking in those early years. Do you realize that he used Chuck as the model for the Intersect?"

"What do you mean, Ellie? He made it for Chuck?"

"No," Ellie said, her face scrunching a bit as she searched for the right way to explain herself, "no, it's the other way around. He was fascinated by Chuck, by how retentive he was, by how kind he was, even as a boy, the way his mind never got out in front of his heart. Dad wanted the Intersect to make people...well, more like Chuck. Quick, retentive. But it was also supposed to enhance the relationship between the mind and the heart. I don't mean the physical organ, of course, I mean the sense of empathy, the ability to imagine how things are with others, that kind of thing. You know, emotions, feelings.

"But when the government agencies got hold of it, they began to twist it around. I believe that after Hartley, and after Mom left, Dad lost touch with his early vision, allowed the Intersect to get twisted into a weapon. But it was meant to be a teaching tool.

"The Intersect Dad originally envisioned would have been the last thing to make someone a super-spy. It was supposed to make anyone who had it more human, not less human." Ellie gave Sarah a slightly apologetic glance, "But I also think that Dad's early vision was always there, was always the infrastructure, of the later Intersects, and that that's the reason even the ones that hadn't been wholly distorted by Fulcrum or the Ring wouldn't work well in anyone but Chuck. In a way, the Intersect is... _at home_ in Chuck. Certainly, the early one, the one he first downloaded was, and I suspect it 'corrected' the later ones to some extent, helped Chuck to bear them. The long and short of it is that the Intersect Chuck has isn't _alien_ to him." She stopped. She went on. "Put it like this: the Intersect didn't change Chuck, unless…"

Sarah picked up the thread, understanding suddenly but also in wonder. "...Unless it made him more like _himself_ , made Chuck more _Chuck_."

Ellie shook her head and smiled. "But that's obviously not the problem we are up against now. Wheelwright figured out a way to control Chuck's Intersect. Dad never thought to provide any...well, firewalls or security for the system. Using Dad's notes, Wheelwright found that he could coerce Chuck."

"The pizza ads."

"Right. But then he realized that his Revoltium has a strange effect on the spiders, and he began to wonder if perhaps it could be used to...link...an Intersected mind to the mind of the spiders. The Intersect...how to put this?...sits so deeply in Chuck's mind that it connects to levels that are...analogous...to more primitive minds. I guess that's the way to put it. Anyway, Wheelwright guessed right, from what you've told me. Chuck was able to control the spiders, but in the same clumsy, general way that Wheelwright had been able to control Chuck. All he really could do, I suspect, was get them to respond to his strongest desires."

"Ok, Ellie. I mean I'd never believe it unless I'd seen it. But I did. Still, where does this leave Chuck." She stopped and swallowed hard. "Am I ever going to get him back, Ellie?"

Elle sat back in her chair and sighed. "I don't know. I was able to run blood tests. Since we had the canister, I could identify the presence of the Revoltium. It has almost all left his system. Once it's gone, maybe in a few hours, we should know more."

Sarah laced her fingers together and stared down into her palms for a long while. Ellie waited.

"What about Rider?"

Ellie brightened. "There I have good news. I think with Dad's notes and Wheelwright's computer, I can remove the Intersect from him. I don't think it will hurt him. But there's no reason to take any chance. I can have things ready to do that as early as tomorrow. And we shouldn't delay long. The longer it is in there, the harder it will become to remove, since Rider's mind may grow into it as Chuck's has his."

"What do you make of Rider...talking to Chuck?"

Ellie shrugged. "'There's more in heaven and earth, Horatio…' My guess is that Chuck's right. The fever allowed for the link, some kind of weird, organic Bluetooth-like connection. I suspect, given what Rider told you, that when he went 'on-line' it broke Chuck's link to the spiders." Ellie shrugged. "Only Chuck Bartowski…"

Sarah nodded. "I know. I know. He's like a lanky Bermuda Triangle." They both grinned. "So, tomorrow for Rider?"

"Yes."

"And Ellie, I just want you to know. I'm not mad at you about keeping Chuck's secret. I have a hard time saying no to him too. I wish he had told me, but I don't blame you for keeping his secret."

"Even so, Sarah," Ellie said earnestly, "I owe you an apology. I was angry with you years ago for keeping secrets from me, and I know you did it then for Chuck's sake. Same shoe, different foot, I guess. Forgive me?"

"Done." They stood and hugged again.

ooOoo

The next day, they removed the Intersect from Rider. It all went smoothly and took only a few minutes after the preparations. He blinked a couple of times when it was over, and that was that. After Ellie ran a few tests, he joined Clara again in playing video games.

Beckman had been there for the procedure. When it was over, and Rider left, she pulled Sarah aside. "Sarah, you told me what Rider saw in the jungle. I took the liberty of calling Dr. Dreyfus and telling him about it. He seemed to think it would be a good idea for him to visit and talk with Rider, perhaps to spend a few days with you in Montana. Would you that be ok with you?"

"Really? Dr. Dreyfus? Yes, I'd be grateful. I will be honest. As much as I sort of hate the Intersect in general, I've been more worried about the long-term effects of what Rider saw me do. And it would be...nice to see Dr. Dreyfus again. Tell him he is welcome."

ooOoo

At the end of that day, Chuck was still in the same condition. Sarah was beginning to lose her battle with fear. She was sitting by Chuck's bed. She had taken out her wallet and was looking at a picture of her and Chuck from back in their days in Burbank, back when she'd dressed up as Princess Leia for the Halloween party. She was smiling to herself when she heard his voice.

"I never thought anyone could make that outfit look better than it did in the movie…I was so wrong."

Sarah turned. Chuck was awake. There was a trace of a smile on his face. She threw herself on his chest, hugging him, unable to contain her joy. She couldn't speak. She felt his hand stroke her hair lightly. "Did you mean it?"

She lifted her head enough to see him. "Mean what, Chuck?"

"That we could keep trying to get pregnant." He gave her a slow, waltz-time version of the eyebrow dance. She'd never seen anything that made her happier.

"Do you by any chance still have that outfit? It might inspire me to yet unclimbed heights…"

"Or yet unplumbed depths?"

Chuck flushed and looked around the room, making sure no one had heard them. "You know how I feel about PDA, Mrs. Bartowski."

Sarah was puzzled. " _PDA_ , Mr. Bartowski?"

"Public Declarations of Affection."

She leaned up and whispered in his ear. "Shhh. Don't let anyone hear, Chuck, but I still have the outfit." She kissed him.

Chuck was still trying to re-compose himself as the door opened, and Frost and Rider and Ellie and Clara came in, followed by Casey and Carina and Beckman.

* * *

 **A/N2** Tune in for the finale, Chapter 12 "Yarn's End". Rider meets Dr. Dreyfus. Chuck and Sarah get a little more unexpected couples' counseling. And there may be a spider or two.


	12. Chapter 12: Yarn's End

**A/N1** The final chapter- _cum_ -epilogue. I've enjoyed this comic book extravaganza. Thanks so much for reading and reviewing and PMing. You folks are great!

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

 **Too Old For This**

* * *

CHAPTER TWELVE

 _Yarn's End_

* * *

Back in Bozeman, life was quickly returning to normal. Beckman and Roan were staying at the safe house. She had taken a few weeks of vacation. They had been over last night for BBQ. Roan and Rider had always liked each other, but they'd never spent much time together, really. It was clear that they were going to be buddies. Beckman had come over wearing jeans and sneakers. Sarah had barely recognized her.

Casey had headed back to Gertrude. He said she really wanted that copy of _Garden and Gun_ he had bought her, but it was past obvious he was missing her. He promised that he and Gertrude would both visit at Thanksgiving, with Morgan and Alex in tow.

Dr. Dreyfus had arrived last night, but late. Chuck had stayed up to make sure he got settled. Sarah and Chuck were sitting out on the deck, sipping coffee and tandem staring at the mountains. Sarah loved quiet moments with her husband, moments where she could revel in him and the life they had, the love they shared, but in which she did not feel any need to speak. She felt especially like just sitting this morning because after Chuck had gotten Dr. Dreyfus squared away, he woke Sarah for some noiseless but super-intense love-making. She was still loose-limbed and jointless this morning, disembodied.

Dr. Dreyfus had come to see Rider. They were supposed to start sessions this morning. So far, Sarah had seen no serious change in Rider, except perhaps for a touch of anxiety that she had not noticed before.

ooOoo

 _A few days later_

Sarah saw Rider and Dr. Dreyfus get out of his rental car in the driveway. The two of them had been having sessions out of doors, hiking trails together in the mountains. Dr. Dreyfus, now certainly old, was far from infirm and he turned out to be a serious walker. He and Rider came in the house and Rider headed to the tv room and turned it on. He looked tired and happy. Sarah felt a lot better about Rider.

She had sandwiches and salads out on the deck, ready for lunch, and Dr. Dreyfus went out and sat down. Chuck was already out there, tinkering on the table with some gadgets Sarah did not recognize. She came out, a pitcher of lemonade in hand.

She sat it on the table and then took her seat beside Chuck. She felt a twinge of nerves. Dr. Dreyfus had not revealed anything yet about his talks with Rider.

"So, Doctor, how is he?" Chuck asked the question and Sarah reached out to take his hand in thanks.

Dr. Dreyfus smiled. "He's one of a kind, so far." He gave Chuck and Sarah a knowing look. "I believe he is going to be fine. Like you, Chuck, he can take a punch, if you will pardon that way of putting it. And like you, Sarah, he has internalized a remarkable amount of self-discipline. That's a powerful combination, although, like each of its contributing parts, it can create problems. But in this case, I don't think it has. He's handling it all. Oh, and I've seen zero evidence that the Intersect has left any traces in him."

Sarah exhaled. She realized she'd been holding that breath, in a way, since the jungle. "So, he's not...afraid of me?"

"Oh no, Sarah. Your son not only loves you, he deeply admires you. Both of you. No, he's not afraid of you, Sarah, or bothered by your Intersect, Chuck. But there has been a change: he is now afraid _for_ both of you. Even though he figured out that Chuck's bedtime spy stories were edited versions of your stories, he never really confronted the life and death danger that the two of you lived in for so long, and have lived in again recently. That's all real to him now, and he has some sense-more than most children his age do-of how fragile his life is."

Sarah dropped her head. "He's lost his innocence."

"No, not exactly, Sarah," Dr. Dreyfus responded quickly, holding up one hand, palm out, and shaking it a little. "No, he's just come to understand that his innocence is a gift, not a right. He trusts you two. He believes you will keep him safe. He's willing, as we know, to do whatever it takes (that was his phrase I believe, he said Aunt Ellie liked to use it) to keep you two safe. He hasn't lost his innocence, he is just aware in a way that he wasn't before that he _is_ innocent. It's a strange state for a little boy, but not a bad one, I think, and he is remarkably balanced. But then again, he is the offspring of two remarkable people." Dr. Dreyfus poured himself some lemonade as he finished, and grabbed a sandwich from the platter.

Sarah sat back. She looked at Chuck with a smile and he returned it, squeezing her had, still in his. Dr. Dreyfus was watching them when she turned back around. He finished the bite of the sandwich and then sharpened his glance.

"So, how are you two?"

Sarah was not sure how to answer the question. She wasn't sure how much Beckman had told him about...things.

Dr. Dreyfus solved the problem. "I know that Chuck kept the fact that he still had the Intersect from you, Sarah. Beckman explained that to me, and Chuck's reasons, as she understood them. How do you feel about all that?"

Sarah felt Chuck's fingers twitch. She gave his hand a squeeze, a hard one, and trapped it in hers. "I guess I understand it, even if it makes me...angry."

"What do you mean 'understand', Sarah?"

"I guess Chuck and I are still carrying vestiges of our earlier lives. Everyone does, I know, but ours are particularly...fraught. I carry Agent Walker with me as Chuck carries the early Intersect. And Chuck is afraid that Agent Walker will re-assert herself and that she will one day...leave." She glanced at Chuck. His eyes were damp. Hers became so too.

"Why does he fear that, Sarah?" Dr. Dreyfus was careful, kind.

"Because she still does re-assert herself sometimes, in moments where I am weak or overwhelmed."

"So, could she re-assert herself and cause you to leave?"

Sarah shook her head hard. "No. Absolutely not."

Chuck's head snapped as he turned it. Dr. Dreyfus grinned.

"And why is that?"

"Because she is in love with Chuck. She has been since almost the first moment she saw him. And my love for him is the... _descendent_ of her love for him. I share it with her, like a family resemblance. We both...I don't like this way of talking, but I don't know how else to make it clear...we both love Chuck. Desperately. Exclusively." She giggled at Chuck, and he nodded, remembering. "Oh, and non-competitively." Sarah saw the adoration on Chuck's face. She should have made herself figure this out a long time ago.

"And you, Chuck, how are you adjusting to your new understanding of the Intersect? Do you still treat it as your...romantic rival?" Dr. Dreyfus chuckled. "Sorry," he said, catching himself, "that was unprofessional."

"But deserved," Chuck commented sadly. "No, I honestly think I am past that. I always believed the Intersect was a software parasite, this alien thing trying to change me, control me, that it deserved the credit for my life. That it was what mattered, not me." He glanced at Sarah. "But now I realize that although some of that was true of the later uploads, at least to a degree, it is not true of the first, decisive upload. The Intersect was made in my image. It is not a parasite, not alien, it's just more... _me_."

Sarah lifted Chuck's hand to her lips and kissed it. "And there can never be enough of you, sweetie, not for me. I love you."

Chuck blushed a little. "I love you too."

"And your anger, Sarah?"

"It's going, Dr. Dreyfus. It'll soon be gone. Maybe it already is. Thanks."

Dr. Dreyfus nodded in satisfaction. "Just talk to each other. Make it a ritual. Every night or every morning, take a few minutes together to talk. Sarah, when you feel things deeply, you fear them and so fear to put words to them. And you tend to be quiet, internal, anyway. And you, Chuck, well, you talk articulately and a lot, but you almost always avoid saying the hard things. _Talk to each other_. Chuck, help Sarah with the words. Sarah, force Chuck to face what matters. You two belong together, but that doesn't mean you get to be together, and happy, for free."

The three of them sat in increasingly comfortable silence for a few minutes, letting the conversation filter through them.

"Oh, Chuck," Dr. Dreyfus said suddenly, "any more bad dreams, dreams of spiders?"

Chuck shuddered and smiled simultaneously. "No, no spider dreams. Web free."

"And after Ellie's procedures to prevent anything like what Wheelwright did from happening again, any physical changes, mood changes? Headache? Depression?"

"No," Chuck said, "I've been fine."

"Very good." Dr. Dreyfus picked up his sandwich and began to eat again. He looked out at the mountains as he ate. "It's an amazing place. The sky. The blue just never ends. It embraces the horizons. Makes me feel like anything is possible…"

Chuck leaned close to Sarah, "That's what I feel every time I look in your eyes…"

She turned and kissed him hungrily. PDA-ban be damned!

ooOoo

 _Weeks later_

As fall settled blanketed Montana in changing colors, Sarah found out she was pregnant.

Later that same day, Carina called with the news.

 _She_ was pregnant. For a few minutes, neither could stop laughing. To think that the two of them were pregnant simultaneously! Sarah was still laughing when she told Chuck. She knew how much fun this would be. Carina would be a great mother, no doubt; she already was to Simon. But she would be a miserable pregnant woman.

Sarah was looking forward to the banter getting started.

ooOoo

 _Still Later_

Dr. Dreyfus came to visit once more early in November. He gave Rider a clean bill of health.

They were all in the living room, Chuck, Sarah, Rider, and Dr. Dreyfus. The day was cool. A fire was crackling in the fireplace.

Chuck was staring out the window, at a spider on a web that had taken up residence in a sheltered corner of the deck ceiling. Chuck seemed transfixed.

"What is it, Chuck?" Sarah asked.

"It's an Orb-Weaver spider, mom."

Sarah smiled. "Thanks, Rider. But I was asking your Dad what he was thinking about."

Chuck broke his stare and turned to the room. "Well, spiders, I guess. Everything that happened seems so unreal now, especially the...spidery...part. Only to me, I guess."

Sarah laughed with Rider and Dr. Dreyfus. "Yes, only to you, Chuck."

He sent her a mischievous glance and spoke in a creepy voice. "It's the curse of the Bartowskis."

"There is no curse, Chuck."

"That is exactly what _She_ would say."

"And I am not Ayesha." She gave him the flattest look she could.

"I tell you," Chuck said, his face now in a wide smile as he looked at Sarah. " _It is the curse of the Bartowskis!_ "

Sarah made a face, picked up a pillow from her chair, and even though she was getting a little older, she threw it at Chuck with perfect aim, hitting him right in his smile. She smirked at him as he blinked. _Older, not old._

He reached out to the top of the couch and grabbed the navy blanket Sarah kept there for snuggling on cold Montana nights. He stood, swinging it behind him and holding it above his head, like a shroud or a cape. " _The curse of the Bartowskis_!"

Sarah made a face of mock-terror and got up from her chair, moving quickly behind it, away from Chuck. She squealed a little. He came stalking her, blanket billowing behind him, making haunting sounds.

"There is no curse, Chuck." He came closer. She backed up. He gave her his evil villain laugh. She backed up again. He started chasing her as she dashed from the room. "The curse, the curse!" On the couch, Dr. Dreyfus and Rider were laughing at the antics.

"You'll never catch me!" Sarah cried from the next room.

Chuck laughed again as he gave chase. "I know you are fast, Mrs. Bartowski, but you know that I always catch you in the end."

 **The End**

Happy Halloween!

* * *

 **A/N2** I hope folks got some pleasure from this, my silly little Halloween tale. Thanks for reading. Final thoughts? Leave me a review, please!


End file.
